when talking about my work I use the word Bear in a different context. As a noun it means a beautiful ratio. It can refer to a space or an object in an artwork or in one's field of view, but that space is dependent on another. For instance, if one is looking at a landscape and the sky takes up most of the space, I may refer to the sky as the large bear, and the land as the small bear. It refers not to objects themselves but their relationships to each other. One object is in Bear when it complements another in a beautiful manner. I may say I am painting in bear if all of my marks are in bear of (aesthetically complementing) the last marks.

it can also serve as a verb. one mark may bear another mark if it complements it

the Bear may be the golden ratio, but I haven't been able to confirm this. It's easy to observe that when dividing a canvas into the first Bear, the marks will approach the golden ratio between the top and bottom of the rectangle. Things get more complicated after that. When just following one's instinct for beauty, it's hard to tell which new marks are bearing on old marks. When painting, one is rarely seeing the whole composition at once. Therefore when painting each mark in bear to the last ones, the marks take on a fractal effect as the painter goes into smaller details, since the same rule is used throughout the painting.

here is an example of drawing in bear. You can judge for yourself if it has to do with the golden ratio. A lot of things can come "close enough" to the golden ratio to count in our pattern-seeking brains. This is how I think about it, the patterns that come from the golden ratio exist within the bounds of certain number systems. These number systems describe some aspects of the physical world but not all of them. All fractals are bears, but no one is THE bear. below is an advanced iteration of the former sequence.

you can start to see the fractal pattern, but you might see it better if I started larger and continued with the detail. You may also notice the lines start to change shape as they get smaller. This is because the first shapes are in bear to the rectangle while the latter and in bear to the first shapes.

One Who Bears