SciArt Magazine - All Issues December 2015 | Page 20

and astronomers do not yet know what it is made of. It
does, however have a gravitational effect, so it can be
mapped by its distorting effect on visible light. The idea
of creating art based on a form of matter that we can’t
see was appealing to me and fit in well with the concept
of duality.
One of my more recent works is four images based
on data from a ground–based telescope in Hawaii that
imaged dark matter as the Earth rotated around the sun
over the course of a year. The work is called Four Seasons
of Dark Matter.
The biological images explore our relationship with
nature and the duality of our existence. Many of the
images I use are of deadly viruses and infections such as
Ebola or HIV that, while beautiful to look at, belie their
destructive qualities. Not all the biological images represent diseases. For example, one of the drawings shows
the symbiotic relationships between plants and bacteria.
There are also works that show the basic structures of
our body such as neurons and the rods and cones of the
eye. I am just beginning a series on the mechanisms the
body uses to heal itself. I think I was getting tired of
showing death and destruction and am ready to represent healing.
DM: After you get the initial image(s) for your piece, how do
you develop the imagery in your paintings?
JR: I want the core of the painting to be representative
of what I am painting. I am not trying to be perfectly
accurate, but a person who works in the area should be
able to recognize what the image represents. I feel if I
am using science as the basis of my work, then abstracting the image too much would defeat the purpose of
what I’m attempting to do. I will edit the image and
change colors and background as the colors in the original images typically are artificial, either coming from
stains in biology or from an astronomer’s decision in
how to show light from the spectrum beyond what is visible. Mostly I try to find patterns in the image and work
with the color and design to accentuate these features.
Also, I incorporate gold in many of the works. This is
drawn from medieval paintings that would give gold halos to religious figures. In my work the gold symbolizes
science taking over from religion as the explanation as to
why things are the way they are.
DM: Out of all of your pieces, your physics paintings seem to
have one element the others don’t: words. Why the inclusion of
phrases in these paintings rather than others?
JR: There are a couple of reasons for this. First is composition. The physics images are simpler than the others
so the addition of the words and formulas are more balanced. With the other images the words would compete
with the image. Second, as I said above, to me physics

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is almost like philosophy—the concepts that underlie it
seem impossible, but are true. The image alone wouldn’t
communicate this philosophy so I incorporate the concepts or formulae of particle physics into the painting
and the image and words together tell the whole story.
In my physics works I combine bubble chamber images with words or formulas such as ‘User Created Reality’
or Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to communicate
the true nature of reality and how it differs from what
we observe in the macro world.
DM: Furthermore, Uncertainty (50x50) has a formulaic
equation that stands out from the blackness. Could you talk
about this piece a little?
JR: Uncertainty represents an atom being broken down
into smaller component pieces. At this level, quantum
mechanics is the dominant force in the universe and at
that small level weird reactions take place (known as
quantum weirdness). The formula at the bottom is one
of the aspects of quantum weirdness—it is Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle. This principle states that you
can never know two facts about an object simultaneously with certainty: if you know its position with 100%
accuracy you cannot know its velocity, and vice versa.
This holds true with many other properties of particles.
The concept of never being able to know something
with certainty not only applies to physics