About Me
As a neuroscientist and studio artist, I have found that combining science and art can help spread understanding of current research to the public as well as awareness of important social issues and their relation to science. Neuroscience is at the forefront of explaining human experience, our relationship to technology, and our understanding of behavior, while art is at the forefront of communicating ideas and emotions that are necessary in maintaining the ethics of scientific research. By pulling the two together, I aim to join the conversation that links data with humanity.
One of the most important relationships between neuroscience and visual art is the understanding of how the visual system allows us to experience the world. Everything we see is a representation of our surroundings; our perception is based on attention, expectations, and interpretations that take place inside a gelatinous organ that is shielded from the rest of the world by an encasement of skull. A small difference in the encoding or decoding of visual input can drastically alter the way we perceive the world around us. Recently, I have started making work that attempts to capture my experiences as a person with a visual condition called Meares-Irlen Syndrome/Visual Snow. This disorder results in warping, flashing, strong after-images, sensitivity to light, and a constant veil of flickering specks, similar to television snow. While these distortions always present, high-contrast patterns and bright lighting make my symptoms worse. In particular, Meares-Irlen/Visual Snow makes reading very challenging, but it also affects the everyday world as well. While I have generally thought of Meares-Irlen Syndrome/Visual Snow as an obstacle, incorporating it into my art has helped me realize that in many ways, the distortions I perceive are beautiful and unique. I can look at something I know to be still, yet see it in motion. This is an experience that is thought to affect about 2% of the population, but many go undiagnosed because it is not a well-known disorder and so many people don’t have access to the resources that could provide accommodations. This syndrome can have profoundly negative effects on education, but it has also inspired my artwork as well as my goals of pursuing visual neuroscience research. In an attempt to mimic these visual distortions, I have identified and documented patterns in my daily life that bring about severe distortions. I reflect these images into a pool of water and manipulate the surface of the water to cause the image to ripple and blur. The photos or videos of the resulting distortions inspire large oil paintings. The paintings recreate a single moment of what I actually perceive using many layers of glazes. It is important that the paintings are an accurate representation of my experience to maintain integrity. The imagery demonstrates that while this disorder presents many distractions and educational challenges, there is also a beauty in the movement and overlapping of patterns in the landscape. For me, these places are familiar and comforting, as well as beautiful. I plan to contrast these with the more serious effects of the disorder, such as the difficulties it presents for reading by using the same process to distort text from scientific papers investigating the biological mechanisms underlying Meaeres-Irlen Syndrome. While this work is inspired by my personal life, the paintings are about the process of seeing and understanding the world around us, which is more applicable to everyone. As I mentioned previously, vision more subjective than we are inclined to believe. The lack of definition in the paintings points out this subjectivity, and embraces the fact that every viewer’s experience of the paintings will be unique. |