There is something unusual about people who have made major advances in understanding our world and the universe. They have a unique blend of artistic and scientific genius. This combination can be seen in the great artists and thinkers of the Renaissance. Cultures that activated these qualities used education to give students a broad base of knowledge, fostering polymaths who could recognize connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. This synergistic way of thinking generated tectonic shifts in science, art, and philosophy.
Leonardo da Vinci exemplifies the Renaissance man, with paintings like the Mona Lisa, and his scientific revelations and inventions..
Michelangelo demonstrated a similar blend of artistic and scientific talents, with the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, his sculptures like his David and the Pietà, and engineering wonder of the dome of Saint Peter’s, which after 500 years remains the tallest dome in the world.
Galileo made astronomical discoveries and studied gravity while creating beautiful, detailed drawings.
The artist Lodovico Chigoeli mapped the Moon’s surface.
People who blended science and art include people like Johannes Kepler, the astronomer, music theorist, and artist,who mapped the stars. He also wrote and illustrated the first work of science fiction, Somnium.
Isaac Newton’s illustrations were crucial to the development of the laws of motion and Charles Darwin simplified complex biological concepts through his drawings.
Brian May, the guitarist in the rock band Queen, has a PhD in astrophysics and has contributed to NASA’s research, demonstrating the enduring connection between art and science.
In the 20th century, education began to emphasize specialization, with studies catering to the job market. This narrow focus has occurred across science and in almost every other field. Specialization promotes parallel thinking among people with similar education and background. This way of focused thinking has advantages. It is effective for collaborative problem-solving by focusing on an issue and exploring it from multiple directions, thereby refining our knowledge and understanding. Parallel thinking has contributed to significant technological development such as machines and engines that convert energy into mechanical motion and it also enabled the harnessing of electricity, and produced mathmatical analysis and computers that advanced industry and improved private life. These innovations increased our standard of living, along with our health, and our supply of food.
Unfortunately, parallel thinking also has disadvantages. Scientists today are parallel thinkers and consider outsiders incapable of contributing to their fields. Scientists have produced dynamic theories but fewer dramatic breakthroughs to help us understand our universe. Even art has become isolated from day-to-day reality. Artist’s often take absolutely nothing from reality, and create a purely aesthetic or emotional experience.
Photography and computer-generated imagery have further reduced the need for direct observation of the artist, limiting the opportunity for synergistic thinking. We no longer produce the quantity of breakthroughs we once did. Today’s success in parallel thinking is built on the foundation of scientific quantum leaps, and without this expantion of our knowledge of the universe, our progress will stall.
I am an artist, and as I developed my artistic technique, I became fascinated by discoveries I made that science had overlooked. The observations raised questions that I began incorporating into my paintings, providing me with a remarkably diverse range of subject matter. It has become a cornerstone of my artistic journey.
Before I introduce you to a few of my paintings, here is a bit of my background. I studied art throughout high school, college, and graduate school, while earning a business degree in economics and quantitative methods. In graduate school, I studied architecture in conjunction with art classes. I was gifted in drawing, and improved my painting skills by studying the work of the old masters. My goal was not to simply copy their painting but to replicate the paintings with contemporary settings and by using models in the same poses and adjusting my own work until I could duplicate their compositional style and paint application. I also make the frames for my paintings as the painting develops. The frames are sometimes built from scratch, as with Starlight and Stardust; sometimes from found objects, like in Titan’s Pie; or from discarded wood or molding, as with Crators Cradle.
Leedah and the Anhinga was the first painting I based on an old master’s painting, Boucher’s Leedah and the Swan. I used his figures but envisioned what the painting would look like if Boucher had lived in Florida. In my version, the long-necked Florida anhinga replaces the swan, and the original European swamp background transforms into a mangrove coastal wetland. The change in setting did not change the incongruity of seeing two naked ladies having a picnic in a swamp.
The next painting, “The Rape of the Daughters of Wooten.” I used “rape” in its original sense of “to snatch, grab, or carry off by force.” My inspiration came from Peter Paul Rubens’ painting, “The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus.” I used the name Wooten, as in Wooten’s Airboats, a well known South Florida adventure ride. I was unaware that Mr. Wooten had daughters. Airboats were too low-slung to fit into the painting’s original composition. So Rubens’ horses became an 18-wheeler. My model was a beautiful blonde with a graceful figure; she was not overweight, but appeared full-figured when placed in the same position as the original work. Rubens chose poses so that the women, who were nude, would not appear as sex symbols but as symbols of nurturing and tendernesse.
With the painting “Titan’s Pi”, science became a part of my palette. This painting depicts 4 Titans from mythology establishing order in the world. Each Titan holds up a different face of Earth. It was inspired by my son, then eight years old, who asked why Earth’s surface is 70% water. The question prompted me to build a model to visualize the planet without water, leaving only the continents and sea islands. The continents fit together without overlapping or leaving empty gaps, completely covering a smaller sphere, and most importantly, without altering the shapes of the landmasses, some continents fit together in unexpected ways and others dramatically altered their relative positions.
Here is that 3-D puzzle, shown with these two globes: the larger shows Earth with continents, and the smaller shows tracings of the continents from the larger applied to it. The East and West Indies were challenging. Here, the islands are fragmented, small, and difficult to piece together. Ultimately, this process resulted in a globe completely covered by land. Given the complex shapes of the continents, this model was surprisingly easy to build.
The next painting was inspired by the pockmarked surface of our Moon. I noticed two patterns that I discovered, but that I soon found on every cratered planet, moon, and asteroid in our solar system. The painting “Craters Cradle” was the result. It depicts 4 women, each representing a Moon goddess from a different culture: Celine, Coyolshallqui, Rhiannon, and Mana Quilla. Together, they are using a string to measure the craters, noting their roundness and the sequence of their formation.o.
The first question was about crater shape; meteor or asteroid craters are always circular, never elliptical. Most meteors enter the atmosphere at an angle rather than straight down. Given this angle, one might expect the resulting impact to be elliptical, but it is consistently circular.
I have been told by geologists that the circular shape resulted from meteors exploding because of the heat generated by friction as they entered Earth’s atmosphere. Yet the same pattern holds, even for those celestial bodies without an atmosphere. Are craters caused by something other than meteor impacts?
The next question is, if two craters are superimposed, why are smaller craters always superimposed on larger ones? There are no exceptions to the rule; larger craters never partially cover smaller ones, and in experiments, ejected debris never falls back onto the original circular site. Craters are consistently ordered by size.
The last painting I will talk about is “Starlight and Stardust,” It depicts an imaginary conversation between Olè Rolmǎr and his wife, Ann Marie Bartoelin, on the nature of light. Olè was the court scientist for Louis XIV and taught the king’s son, whose education was meant to make him a polymath. During his father’s reign, the study of science was very fashionable and an integral part of court life. Depictions of astronomy adorned palace ceilings, and scientific instruments were displayed both to entertain and educate the elite.
In the 17th century, people believed light travelled instantaneously. However, Olè observed anomalies in the light from Jupiter’s moons that he could only explain if light had a speed. Olè was unaware that the space between Jupiter and Earth was not a vacuum, or that light’s speed varies when it travels through different substances and densities, and that it even changes speed with temperature. Light’s speed is calculated using radio interferometers and lasers inside our solar system, yet we still consider space a vacuum.
The distance between Earth and Jupiter averages 444 million miles. This space is closer to a vacuum than anything we can create on Earth. However, it still contains matter that would interfere with light’s transmission. The density of interplanetary space over this distance varies significantly, from 5 to 100 particles per cubic centimeter. This interplanetary dust is made of carbon, iron, sulfur, nickel, silicates, and includes tiny spheroids of glass embedded with metal sulfides.
Intergalactic space has a lower density than space in our solar system, and its density also varies. As shown by both Voyager spacecrafts, which reported a significant increase in density as they first entered interstellar space. Light traveling millions or billions of light-years in interstellar space would encounter less matter per mile. Would that reduction in matter result in light traveling faster?
In the 17th century, artists’ and scientists’ discoveries about the laws that govern the universe were popular topics for contemplation and discussion. Although specialization and parallel thinking today have made great strides in technology and industry, it is the synergy between people with different interests that will lead to the most discoveries.
I have more paintings that pose questions on subjects like gravity, time, and global warming, and encourage your curiosity to inspire discussion and questions that will support breakthroughs in knowledge. Thank you for your interest, and hope to talk again soon.