Adding the Words

Why have one when you could have both?

Fragile Memory, Ink on Yupo, 2022 (text by Isabel Allende from The House of the Spirits)

I’ve been making art inspired by science for years now. I’ve painted a lot of viruses, bacteria, neurons and cells. Although I am a fine artist, not a science writer or illustrator, I consider myself part of the Science Communication, or SciComm, world. Think of me as a minor character in both ArtWorld and the SciComm Extended Universe.

Like most artists, I work through many iterations of a theme, experimenting with different techniques, effects, and formats. I try stuff. I look at it, I think about it, maybe I show it to some people, and then I try other stuff.

About five years ago, I began painting images of brains in ink on Yupo, a non-absorbent polypropylene paper. Using ink and water on Yupo allowed me to create dramatic, organic shapes.  But I wanted to do more than make pretty paintings of brains. I wanted to suggest the processes of learning, remembering and forgetting.

I started to work in layers of ink and water on the Yupo. I added ink on wet Yupo and it created patterns, like new information. Then I allowed the ink to settle for a while and partially dry. Then I poured water over the surface of the Yupo, which would wash some of the information away…but left ghostly patterns, like an echo of a song that you once knew by heart.  

Brain Scan 5, Ink on Yupo, 2019

I had been making these pieces for a few years when the COVID pandemic struck. During the pandemic, we all had a unique opportunity to witness how the public absorbed messages about science, for good and ill. Clearly, we needed more than facts and statistics, we needed compelling stories. We needed words.

I considered that my memory paintings might also be stronger if I added some words.

I started thinking of writers who have conveyed a sense of memory, well, unforgettably. I thought of Proust, of the passage in In Search of Lost Time where Swann bites into a madeleine and is instantly transported back to his childhood. I thought of Nabokov’s elegiac Speak, Memory. I thought of Isabel Allende’s evocation of the dreams of generations of women. And then I came up with a technique that allowed me to layer their words into my images of brains and neurons. Because of the layering, the words are only half-visible, like a faded memory, a thought just out of reach.

When I was able to get back to showing art face-to-face, people genuinely connected with these pieces. They found words and images that together resonated deeply.

So this is what I’m going to try to do with this newsletter, which I plan to publish every two weeks. I’ll show you my art, of course. I’ll keep you updated on my upcoming events. But I’ll dive a little deeper into what I find inspiring, how I progress from concept to finished piece. I’ll digress. I’ll talk about other artists, writers, and scientists whose work I admire.

This is me adding the words.

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