BioArt
Cell Adhesion
Three panels 12 x 30 in, one panel 18 x 30 in
Oil on canvas
2009
SOLD
This painting is based on Matt Woodlin's undergraduate research at Carnegie Mellon. He was studying how skin cells move around. I was really struck by the beauty of the pictures – but most of it came from the fact that there had been a problem with staining the cells. Biologists use staining to differentiate different parts of the cell, like the membrane, the nucleus, or a particular protein. The staining had become undiscriminate, and the cells were gorgeous. While for his studies these images may have not been useful, for me, they are very powerful. Talk about individual intention, individual agency at the cellular level!
This painting is about the tension in each cells’ skeleton: the strength of the structure inside the cell and how it can push and pull the cell on a substrate, the strength of the bond it can build to another cell, and what communication may pass between them.
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