Origins : Complexity Rising

A new painting from an earlier study.

We tend to think of evolution as a biological process of rising complexity that began with single-celled organisms here on earth, but the universe has been undergoing a cosmic evolution of growing complexity from the very beginning.

Before there could be cells, there needed to be complex molecules and an array of elements to make them. The earliest known events of the universe generated only a few of the lightest elements: hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium. Until the first stars formed and began fusing protons and neutrons into larger nuclei the universe was devoid of heavier elements, including the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen of which we are made. Other processes took these elements and bonded them into basic amino acids and other molecular building blocks of life as we know it.

Biological evolution on our planet is thought to be nearly as old as the Earth, but the complexity that made it possible has been accumulating since time began.

18 x 24 inches, Oil on Panel

In this painting, the thread of gas and dust that grows from the left and reaches a crescendo at the right represents the growth of complexity through time. Also featured is a developing galaxy, early massive hot blue stars fusing higher elements, a supernova explosion spreading higher elements into space, a new star and protoplanetary disk enriched with elements, and a newly formed earth-like planet in the bottom right. The figure, an allegory of rising complexity, wears a necklace featuring a carbon atom and her hairpiece is a model of a basic amino acid that has been found abundantly in outer space. These are the building blocks of life ready for biological evolution to begin!

Night Migration, Study

In our night sky there is a dark band than runs through the Milky Way, known as the Great Rift. This darkness is where the stars of our galaxy are obscured by vast clouds of interstellar geese and dust.

For many thousands of years, at least, our ancestors looked at the random distribution of stars in the night sky and saw things that were familiar to them. The constellations were an enjoyable, meaningful, and useful way to see the sky. Many of them likely believed the things they saw in the stars were literally there in the sky, for they knew no better explanation of reality. Now we do have better explanations, we know what the stars are and that there are no literal animals or people in the constellations they make, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the whimsy and poetry in their patterns.

Available Sunday morning (8/20/23) on Every Day Original

6 x 8 inches, Detailed Oil Study

Ephemeral Complexity

A new tiny painting available on Every Day Original tomorrow morning, 5/20/23.

"How in the world did something as organized as a human being ever come to be? ... Think of mixing cream into coffee ... At the beginning, the system is low-entropy. There are relatively few ways to rearrange the atoms in the cream and coffee without changing its macroscopic appearance ... At the end, everything is mixed together and the entropy is relatively high ... It's the intermediate stage, in between low entropy and high entropy, where things look complex. Tendrils of cream reach into the coffee in intricate and beautiful ways ... Those swirls in the cream mixing into the coffee? That's us. Ephemeral patterns of complexity, riding a wave of increasing entropy from simple beginnings to a simple end."
- Sean Carroll, The Big Picture

This is a beautiful analogy of the universe as it transitions from its low-entropy, Big Bang beginning, to its distant future, high-entropy diffusion of particles. Life is possible in the interim because there is free energy available that allows complex molecules to form and interact in near infinite ways. Given enough time and variety of conditions these molecules can become self replicating and as Charles Darwin put it, "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Oil on Panel, 7x7 in

Moondance

A new painting, now on display in Abend Gallery's current exhibit: Contours of Nature

“In a way, it’s really science that’s been inspiring rituals all along. Beneath the specifics of all our beliefs, sacred texts, origin stories, and dogmas, we humans have been celebrating the same two things since the dawn of time: astronomy and biology. The changing of the seasons, the long summer days, the harvest, the endless winter nights, and the blossoming spring are all by-products of how the Earth orbits the sun. The phases of the moon, which have dictated the timing of rituals since the dawn of civilization, are the result of how the moon orbits us. Birth, puberty, reproduction, and death are the biological processes of being human. Throughout the history of our species, these have been the miracles, for lack of a better word, that have given us meaning. They are the real, tangible events upon which countless celebrations have been built, mirroring one another even among societies who had no contact.”

- Sasha Sagan, For Small Creature Such as We

40 x 40 in, Oil on Cradled Panel

Nullius In Verba, Timelapse Video

A new timelapse video of Nullius In Verba is now free to watch on the website!

This video has been available on my Patreon, but I'm now releasing it to the wider public with added vocal narration about the Cosmic Perspective series. So give it a shot with the sound on and let me know what you think!

About Nullius In Verba:
Latin for "Take nobody's word for it", Nullius in Verba is the motto of the world's oldest national scientific institution, the UK's Royal Society, founded in 1660. The motto was adopted to signify the fellows' determination to establish facts by experiment. They recognized that we cannot accept assumptions or stories from authority, no matter how charismatic. If we want to understand nature, we must observe nature. It has taken centuries to get as far as we have, but this simple idea has allowed humanity to rein in superstition, famine, and disease. It has taken us from horseback to the moon and back. We still face formidable challenges, to be sure, and those challenges make it easy to take for granted just how far we've come. We now communicate at the speed of light, traverse the earth through the sky like birds, and produce more food than we need - even if economic forces keep that food from reaching everyone equitably.

Scientists do get things wrong from time to time and solutions sometimes have unintended consequences, but collective scientific scrutiny of claims leads to a steady correction of errors in our understanding. Science is not perfect, but it is the best method of knowledge discovery we have, and that's worth celebrating.


Original Sold
Prints available

Oil, 24 x 18 inches

Great Mystery

A new tiny painting coming to Every Day Original tomorrow morning!

"People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live. What I mean is we never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."
- Albert Einstein

Oil, 8 x 6 in

Searcher

A new painting coming to Every Day Original's extended gallery "Beyond the Every Day" this Sunday Afternoon, 3:30 Eastern. (11/20)

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man."

- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

10 x 8 in
Oil on Yupo Panel

Since I first thought to put a satellite dish in the subjects hair in a painting several years ago, I've enjoyed the rich implied meaning in it. It seems to express a willingness to listen, a curiosity for what's out there. It could imply the search for extraterrestrial life, which in some ways is about finding out who we are. Through listening, it implies humility and a willingness to set aside our desires in favor of observation, so central to science. By pairing it with the Einstein quote above, it becomes about being open to the enchanting mystery of universe and the "spirituality" to be found there. Described well by this quote from Sagan I recently rediscovered:

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both."

- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

A Galaxy Within II

We are each a little galaxy of our own. It's a mind-bending exercise trying to comprehend the 100 billion stars found in a typical galaxy. Yet, each of us has roughly the same number of neurons in our own brain, performing a symphony of consciousness. We are a staggeringly complex and unique collection of natural components, come together for a short, precious moment.

If you're disappointed by the realization that we are "just" collections of atoms, then you may want to consider more deeply the unfathomable multitude of those atoms, how intricately organized they are to facilitate life, and the oceans of time it took for evolution to shape them into that configuration. The average human body is comprised of more atoms than there are stars, not just in our galaxy, but in the visible universe. These 7 octillion atoms are arrayed in astonishing complexity to create 500 trillion cells of numerous types, each with its own suite of exquisite molecular machines, precisely folded proteins, and ordered genetic code. It's hard to comprehend how long it took for this intricate system to evolve. If that time were the Atlantic ocean at it's narrowest crossing, then all of human history would represent the first 13 feet from the shore. Just to get back to the point where our ancestor was some kind of fish is roughly 185 million generations that had to survive and pass on their genes so that you could experience this world, with all its heartache, and its wonder.

Oil on Panel
24 x 18 inches

I had a great time, as always, exhibiting at the IX Art Show last month!
Photo by Dave Seeley

Exhibiting at IX always helps to refocus my efforts and clarify my message. The experience of talking about my paintings with one person after another at the show has a way of distilling my thoughts down into their best expressions. What emerged from this years conversations became the second paragraph above. It's a reframing of what is often viewed as a great disappointment when coming to a naturalist world view, that we are "just" atoms. The reality is so staggeringly complex and amazing that I often found myself choking up as tried to convey it.

I am reminded of some wonderful scientific visualizations that have been made of the workings of the human cell. They're a great way to try to wrap your mind around the complexity that is required for us to exist. I highly recommend giving them a few minutes of your time.

Here is a video by Veritasium explaining some amazing cellular animations by Drew Berry.

And here is a short video about the amazing artwork of David Goodwill visualizing the workings of cells and viruses.

Invasion Murals

Three years ago I was asked to paint two murals for the control center of a Japanese space agency, called JASA, in an upcoming Apple TV+ series. I was told little else. They were supposed to start filming soon, so I only had a week to paint each piece. I painted them at a sizable 44 inches wide and from there the images were blown up and printed at about 13 feet wide on the set. I later learned that the show was titled, Invasion. It was certainly a fun project to be a part of, though the murals appear only briefly in the show. The concept and design of the aliens that appear in the series is quite interesting and unique.

 

Cosmic Awareness

Another new full size painting from an earlier study, on it's way to the IX Art Show next week!

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself"
-Carl Sagan

We are products of 13.8 billion years evolution and we are part of this universe, not simply within it.
First, from an incredibly hot and dense beginning, simple atoms of hydrogen and helium had to form as space expanded and cooled. Before a planet could evolve life, these simple atoms had to form stars that would fuse heavier elements. These stars had to burn out in violent explosions that would seed new solar systems like ours with the elements necessary for life. After more than 9 billion years of cosmic evolution, our planet formed and began to evolve life. In this little corner at least, we are the first parts of the universe with the ability to look out at the night sky and understand it. We are the universe coming to know itself.

For me, the meaning of this painting is two fold. There is the meaning expressed above, that we are a part of the universe which has gained consciousness and is experiencing other parts of the universe. But I feel this painting also expresses something about the Cosmic Perspective series more broadly. Having the curiosity to look out and learn about the universe in which we find ourselves is an awakening experience: It's staggeringly vast. Our little sand grain of a planet is the only hospitable place within at least several lightyear's distance. This understanding puts things in perspective, our daily problems seem smaller, our culturally diverse human family feels a little closer, and fighting within it looks even more foolish.

This is what the Cosmic Perspective series in intended to remind us of.

Oil, 30 x 24 inches

 

Magnetosphere

This new painting from an earlier study will be coming with me to the IX art show, Oct 19-23!

In addition to the beneficial warmth and light we receive daily, our sun expels a constant wave of dangerous charged particles called the solar wind. When solar storms occur, flares and coronal mass ejections can be thrown our way at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour. Luckily, movements within earths molten metal core generate a protective magnetic shield around our home planet. Without our magnetosphere to protect us, the solar wind may have long ago stripped away our atmosphere, leaving Earth looking much more like Mars looks today: barren, dry, and lifeless.

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about our magnetosphere, but it’s one of the many extraordinary things that make life possible on our little world.

Oil, 30 x 24 in

 

Complexity Rising, Study

A new detailed study available on Every Day Original tomorrow morning!

We tend to think of evolution as a biological process of rising complexity that began with single-celled organisms here on earth, but the universe has been growing in complexity from the very beginning. 

Before there could be cells, there needed to be complex molecules and a host of elements to make them. The earliest known events of the universe generated only a few of the lightest elements: hydrogen, helium, and a little bit of lithium. Until the first stars formed and began fusing protons and neutrons into larger nuclei, the universe was devoid of heavier elements, including the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen of which we are made. Other processes took these elements and bonded them into basic amino acids and other molecular precursors to life as we know it. 

Biological evolution on our planet is thought to be nearly as old as the Earth, but the complexity that made it possible has been accumulating since time began.

Detailed Study, Oil, 6 x 8 inches

 

Magnetosphere Study

An allegory and a little homage to a painting by John Singer Sargent.

 Available tomorrow morning on Every Day Original.com

In addition to the beneficial warmth and light we receive daily, our sun expels a constant wave of dangerous charged particles called the solar wind. When solar storms occur, flares and coronal mass ejections can be thrown our way at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour. Luckily, movements within earths molten metal core generate a protective magnetic shield around our home planet. Without our magnetosphere to protect us, the solar wind may have long ago stripped away Earth’s atmosphere, leaving Earth looking much more like Mars looks today: barren, dry, and lifeless.



Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about our magnetosphere, but it’s one of the many extraordinary things that make life possible on our little world.

Detailed Study, Oil, 8 x 6 inches

First Magic: the Gathering Card Illustration

My first Magic: the Gathering card illustration was recently revealed. This image is for their new set "The Streets of New Capenna" which takes place in a 1920's themed fantasy world. 

For those who might be interested in purchasing the original art, the auction is live in the MtG Art Market Facebook group until Wednesday, April 19th, 11pm Eastern time.

Mari, the Killing Quill
Oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

A Galaxy Within II, Study

A new tiny painting going up on Every Day Original on Sunday. This is a detailed study for a larger work that will be the second in my A Galaxy Within series.


We are each a little galaxy of our own. It's a mind-bending exercise trying to comprehend the 100 billion stars found in a typical galaxy. Yet, each of us has roughly the same number of neurons in our own brain, performing a symphony of consciousness. Similar too, is the number of atoms that write out our DNA code. We are a staggeringly complex and unique collection of natural components, come together for a short, precious moment.

Large numbers are difficult to fathom, but to be disappointed in the realization that we are “just” collections of atoms moving in accordance with the laws of physics, is to misunderstand the depth of this astonishing complexity, and the billions of years it took to evolve.

“We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws [of nature] … Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world ... It bequeaths to us the responsibility and opportunity to make life into what we would have it be.”
-Sean Carroll, The Big Picture

Oil on Panel, 8 x 6 inches