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Bruce Bilney

Bruce Bilney Interview (March 2012)

David Bailey (DB): How did you begin in Escher-like tessellation; was it by seeing Escher’s work (as is usually the case)?
Bruce Bilney (BB): As I say in the first verse of my Tessellations page on my website:

“Once I saw a sketch of Escher’s, Sky and Water is its name;
(It’s Ducks and Fishes actually, but precious just the same) -
Those beasties blew my brain-box: I was never so impressed!
So then I tried to tessellate -
Put Escher under pressure, Mate!
Well, excel them at any rate –
To better Escher’s best!”

... That was in 1969 I believe, I even remember where it was, just outside the University bookshop in my home town, a friend showed me. It was that much of a revelation to me!


DB: What do you consider your best work, and what are its particular merits? In addition, what other examples do you consider that stand out from the rest?
BB: My best tessellation, which also happens to be the world’s best animalesque tessellation J, is TwoRoos, a perfect glide reflection of Kangaroos in iconic leaping pose.

My first and flagship tessellation, which also happens to be the world’s most wondrous concatenation of national icons, is OZZIE the Magic Kangaroo, a translational tessellation combining Australia’s map with a leaping Kangaroo.
 My cleverest tessellation/s, which also happen/s to be the world’s cleverest, are the schizophrenic twin versions of Owls and Bats, which fit together in two different ways, and whose faces metamorphose from bat to owl and vice versa as you invert them.
 The animalesque tessellation of mine which you [i.e. myself, David Bailey] rate most highly is Big Game, a complex glide reflection involving several different big Cats and several different prey species.
I agree it’s wonderful but it’s not my best, (just better than anybody else’s.) And it is unique. Several of my other Kangaroo tessellations and several of my Elephant tessellations, and some others, e.g. Hexy Seahorses, Yabbies, Cockatoos, Turtles, Seals, Wheeling Birds, Cockerels and Chooks, are also better than most anybody else’s anythings . . .
My Eels and Otters is the only truly lifelike Penrose tiling I know of.
 My Australia Each Way (maps) and Chess Knights, Plane Tree Leaves, Grape Harvest, Holly/Oak Leaves, Cornucopiae, and Christmas Trees are amongst my best still-life forms, mostly unique too.
My Acrobats is as close as it is possible to get for fully-articulated, essentially-naked, proportionally-undistorted humans to tessellate. [Ones that rely on big areas of clothing, hair etc, are rubbish. Might as well put Michaelangelo’s David in a butcher’s apron and clown trousers and with a judge’s big wig on.]
 Quantum Leap is obviously the world’s best tessellanimation, and my word tessellanimation is obviously the best word for tessellanimation, does that count?
 AND I have created the best and most varied collection of truly lifelike tessellations ever.The above is by far not all of them. I lost count long ago.

DB: What do you consider to be the most important aspect of a high-quality tessellation?
BB: First, that I Bruce Bilney be its author. I am of course half-joking, but the question is which half. Lifelikeness, plus originality, plus articulation, and more, but lifelikeness first, otherwise I’m not interested.

DB: Which contemporary tessellation artists do you think highly of?
BB: Bruce Bilney.

DB: Do you still think the subject has areas to explore, or has it been mined to exhaustion; did Escher do everything?
BB: I regret this, but it is true: I have pretty-well skimmed the cream of truly lifelike animals. I am constantly disappointed by the paucity of what I regard as really good lifelike tesses, though I would be envious if I saw any better than my own. I don’t, there is not one I really wish I’d done myself. Few creatures lend themselves to lifelikeness. Kangaroos are the best of mammals, Elephants are next, then you run out! And there are reasons for those two: Kangaroos keep their big hind legs together in profile (so you don’t have to fit so many legs which fail to fill the gaps), and Elephants, because their fat legs do fill the gaps so well.)
You [Bailey, following correspondence] know that I do not think highly of fanciful designs, nor of ones which rely on diaphanous clothing, big hair, too few limbs visible etc. Few tessellators even try for true lifelikeness. What may be done with purely decorative designs is another matter. I have only ever tried for lifelikeness in outline, nothing else interests me.
Escher only did a few truly lifelike designs – Sky and Water (Duck’n’fishes) and Night and Day, Ducks, the ones that first interested me; Seahorses I like; Horsemen, with “conveniently-shaped” headpieces by the way; Bulldogs, seated hounds, little else. I am literally not in the race for perspectives, nor for all forms of symmetry, the other wondrous stuff Escher did. Remember what I said in that first verse, it is plain truth.
I rate mine the best animalesque tessellations because they are truer-to-life than anyone else’s.
I’m only saying it because it’s true.

Created 22 March 2012