E’n tró py 1. a measure of randomness and disorder within a system. 2. A numerical measure of uncertainty.

In my first-grade class, we were taught to write with our right hand, even though I was more comfortable with my left. We had big sheets of paper and were asked to make lines using our whole arm, then circles. I made hundreds, then thousands of circles. I love the symbolism a circle provides and how it represents the idea of something mathematically perfect, but not fully understood.

I’ve come to believe a balance exists amid the confusion of everyday life in the cyclic nature of order and chaos, beauty and suffering, passion and reason. I explore this idea using metaphors found in literature, mathematics and visual representations of my life and the lives of those around me. I’m drawn to the perfection of imperfection, and though I’m not especially gifted mathematically, I have an irrational obsession with certain numbers.

I strive to create narrative by combining and contrasting subject and approach with varying techniques. I usually create images with the linear intent of incorporating them into others, but frequently use them differently than originally intended. Many of the mediums I prefer are masochistic in their inability to be methodically controlled.

I’ve grown more tolerant of imprecision, and have almost surrendered to the possibilities that present themselves by allowing structure to be partially ambiguous. There is an inherently human compulsion to arrange random events into a progression of thesis, antithesis and synthesis: to bring order from chaos. Clinging to the potentially unreasonable hope that we as a whole can learn from our past, I’ve moved the pencil back to my left hand…I’m learning to write again.

—Peggy Washburn