Features: What's In A Name - A Poste of Curious Thynges

Once upon a time, for a very long time – for almost a decade – visual art was not my thing. My thing was writing.

I started writing historical fiction set in 13th century Scotland, and when I was well into my story I needed to give one of my characters a debilitating illness. Not something that would kill him right away, but something that would cause a steady decline in health and affect his ability to carry out usual daily tasks. I also needed to know how this illness (I settled on heart disease by way of shortness of breath and palpitations) would be treated by the village's healer.

I was fortunate to obtain a legible manuscript of herbal remedies from the era my story was set in. It was written in Middle English, but I enjoyed the challenge and necessary research of puzzling it out – especially the more obscure words.

The novel was eventually finished (it's in a box beneath my feet) but while working with the medical manuscript I discovered a love greater than writing fiction. I discovered a passion for researching medical treatments and how they evolved from the 13th through 18th centuries, and how the language they were written in evolved as well. I amassed quite a collection of manuscripts from these centuries, written in one variety of English or another, with a healthy sprinkling of Latin and French. And so I delved wholeheartedly into what I called "the manuscript project." It was a challenge that I loved beyond measure.

It was at this time that I also discovered fractal art. At the end of the day I would put away the manuscripts, relax, put on some music, and – like a kid with a new box of crayons and coloring book – play at creating fractals.

And yet, a part of my brain was still so immersed in archaic phrasing and spelling, that when it came to naming the fractals (or, as often happens, they named themselves) I ended up with titles greatly influenced by the project I was creating art in order to escape.

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Also see: Mostly Medieval - Exploring the Middle Ages to explore the results of further research undertaken while writing.