Hubble Space Telescope images of incredibly
distant things, images of planetary bodies
from satellites that we sent out, all of which I
painted in this same kind of swirling technique.
The stroke of each layer of oil paint on top of
one another has a certain kind of appeal, and
I thought, “Actually, I’m interested in this idea
that paint is liquid; paint is a dynamic flowing
substance that can represent all kinds of
dynamic, flowing substances, in particular, the
universe.” At all different scales, the universe
is made up of dynamic flowing substances,
whether it’s the gas in a nebula or the clouds
that make up a hurricane or the tiny bits of
20
watery fluid that make up a living cell. So I felt
like the same techniques that I’d created in this
abstract painting world were ideally suited for
investigating scientific images in this way.
I continued that with the “Simulation”
series, where instead of taking images that
were actually based on observations, I took
supercomputer simulations of complex
phenomena, like supernovae or fluid dynamics.
Again, the central idea was this notion of
flowing paint being this simulation of the larger
phenomena. So I deliberately let paint run and
colors mix together, mixing paint in an unstable
SciArt in America December 2013