Oil Painting

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Science and Art Work

Artist Statement

artist statement

"The artistic tendency to use science to inform art is an extension of a romantic and late-romantic attitude that can be traced back to writers such as Edgar Allan Poe (who made use of scientific and mathematic sources in his stories), and it normally operates by reinventing the 'dry' scientific materials in order to bring out its expressive meanings." (Elkins 1995)

Instead of finding that a scientific perspective reduces or demystifies reality, Biology has always been, to me, a tool to discover the increasing complexity of the world.

Science constantly produces new knowledge, accumulating numbers, images and relationships. Sometimes science comes under fire because it got something wrong, or because it's not sure. Of course, it has been wrong before and it will be again, science is after all a human process.. and it’s not complete! The question to me is, how do we deal and think about this constantly evolving and incomplete knowledge? How do we transform this knowledge to understanding of ourselves and the world?

I’m particularly interested in how our perceptions of our bodies and our identities has changed so dramatically in face of discoveries in Biology in the last century. The organismic view of the human body as a whole, separated by the environment by a layer of skin, organized by a central organ, is irreversibly compromised by the concept of super-organism, cellular intention and decision-making, permeable barriers, etc. Like discovering the role of individual neurons in decision-making and during development that lead to innate memories and reflexes; the concept of the human body as a super-organism that contains many more non-human cells and DNA than human; or the notion that our barriers are very permeable, and the decentralized immune system patrols the body constantly deciding what is the body, and what is not. Many lines of reserach are uncovering biological foundations for social and psychological constructs like the process of learning, addiction, fear, instinct.

If Science is an isolated sphere of human activity, that needs extra effort to connect with popular culture and the general public, oil painting is the opposite. Oil painting is a practice deeply rooted in art and art history. An integral part of our culture, with a long tradition as a medium for the registry of icons, universal and contemporary themes. Art, including oil painting, has always been a tool for scientists to understand the human body, and it makes sense to me that today too, it plays this role to understand its ongoing evolution.

Most of my work is based on current or recent research. In most cases I've been able to contact researchers in the field, to learn from their vision and individual passion. I feel the work has benefitted tremendously from working directly with scientists, and thank them for their generosity in sharing their insights and experience.

In 2004-06, I collaborated with Dr. Alison Barth and Dr. Nathan Urban, prominent neuroscientists at CMU, to create a series of oil paintings on the role of the individual neuron in decision-making and, during embryonic development, in the formation of innate memories and reflexes in mice. In 2005, the piece Hippocampus of transgenic mice where the expression of the activity related gene C-Fos was accompanied with the expression of green fluorescent protein for the study of sensorial learning became the cover for The Journal of Neuroscience (issue of April 27th, 2005). See below for snippets about particular pieces.

Since 2005, I work with Dr. John A. Pollock, at Carnegie Mellon University and now at Duquesne University, under the grant Science Education Partnership Award, granted by the National Institutes of Health. We create innovative educational tools, combining art and cutting-edge science. In 2008-10, we created the Spiral of Life project that proposes a new image to synthesize the state of the art of evolution science. Five art pieces based on this image were installed at museums in Pittsburgh, PA.

See more about work in museums and schools >>

Neuron networks growing. Stem cells differentiating into neurons. 2007

Based on the research of Sasha Bakrhu, who studies the development of stem cells into neuron cells. Fed the right growth factors, a bunch of undifferentiated cells will grow into different kinds of neurons and form networks, even on their own.

Mouse somatosensory cortex pyramidal neuron – the Spines. 2006.
Neurons extend dendrites in all directions to make contact with neighboring cells. The points of contact between dendrites are characterized by a small protrusion, the spine. Dr. Barth’s research points to the independent reaction of these spines in response to a stimuli.

This painting is inspired by the luminescence of fluorescent imaging of neuron spines obtained in the course of electrophysiological recording, highlighting the independent activity of each spine with different temperature colors.

"Instinct III - Cooperation at the Cellular Level
Neurons in the mouse olfactory bulbs. 2006
The same study also uncovered interactions between neuron cells at such a complex level that baffles the scientists and suggests new concepts for describing them, such as intentionality and cooperation at the cellular level. These ideas tie-in with a big polemic trend called “holistic biology” that avers that at all levels of organic life (and maybe inorganic) from system to organismic to molecular level we find traits that are usually reserved only for sentient organisms (which only categorizes human beings) such as cooperation, altruism, agency. The attribute that has been causing the most polemic is the ability to self-organize, since many scientists believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution implicates a slower evolution (by random mutation) that is not accounted for completely in fossil records.

Instinct V - Deimos
Neurons of the Lymbic System. 2006
This piece relates another piece of evidence of Biology uncovering the biological basis for an instinct, in this case the instinct to fear. Dr. Norberto Coimbra in the University of Ribeirao Preto is doing research on the inborn reflex of fear in mice.

Instinct I and II - Hereditary memory
Mouse olfactory bulbs. 2005
Working in the neurobiology laboratory with Dr. Nathan Urban at the Mellon Institute, I learned about ongoing research on the subject of olfactory memory, which is believed to be hereditary and, consequentially, innate. In other words, they are uncovering the biological foundation for a form of instinct, a form of expression of the unconscious, and something until now of the pervay of psychology if at all considered by any science. The notion of hereditary memory and instinct in mice proposes that the same processes happen in human beings, opening once more the Pandora’s box of our unconscious mind from a purely scientific direction.

Sea urchin embryos at 18h, stained for primary mesenchyme cells. Observation of skeletal ring. 2004
This piece was born out of photographs of sea urchins I took as part of a SURG project during the summer of summer of 2003 with Dr. Charles Ettensohn. We profiled the developmental activity of b-catenin during sea urchin early embryogenesis, which means determining the window of time in which the ß-catenin pathway is actively signaling.

Hippocampus of transgenic mice where the expression of the activity related gene C-Fos was accompanied with the expression of green fluorescent protein for the study of sensorial learning. 2004
I worked with Dr. Allison Barth during the summer 2002. At this time. I mapped the barrel field in mouse cortex in the context of studying neuron plasticity in sensorial learning.
See the conflict of the compartimentalization between humanities/sciences showing between psychology and neuroscience, when we are at a point in which neuroscientists are studying learning, memory and addiction in the laboratory.