Author: Mitchell Newberry, Research Assistant Professor of Biology, University of New Mexico

Do artists and scientists see the same thing in the shape of trees? As a scientist who studies branching patterns in living things, I’m starting to think so. ‘Tableau I’ by Piet Mondrian, 1921. Kunstmuseum Den Haag Piet Mondrian was an early 20th-century abstract artist and art theorist obsessed with simplicity and essence of form. Even people who have never heard of Mondrian will likely recognize his iconic irregular grids of rectangles. When I saw Mondrian’s 1911 “Gray Tree,” I immediately recognized something about trees that I had struggled to describe. By removing all but the most essential elements in…