It has been past 6 months since I’ve ‘published’ anything on
this blog and for good reason. I have
transitioned completely out of the art services industry in which I was
scrapping by and am now conducting scientific research in the relatively new
field of Adaptive Optics on the retina.
Adaptive Optics is not a new scientific technique, it’s been
used in astronomy for many years but it is new in Retinal Research. By using an infrared laser we can scan the
retina and see the cone density and structure of the eye, my job is to acquire
these scans but also to determine how the variety of images I take relate to
the other imaging devices currently in use and confer with the Ophthalmologists
and the device makers in how to improve and develop this technology in a
diagnostic setting and the final interpretive analysis.
As an artist who has a hard science background, having
studied biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics in university before I took
a break and switched to art the transition has actually been incredibly smooth
and the job is, well fantastic.
One of the great pleasures has been meeting and talking with
some of the top Ophthalmologists, neuro scientists and physicists in the field
but more importantly are the exciting conversations that have ensued about
perception and reality, language and reality and sometimes and not too
infrequently metaphysics.
The perceptual consciousness of vision in hindsight has
always been a strong theme in my work and looking back at some of my ‘gestural
works’ I can see that the various lines that have come through my paintings are
related to the blood vessels and nerve fiber nets in an odd way, although this
is really applying a reading or interpretation after the fact, no fuzzy
metaphysics here, just happy accident or coincidence.
More to come- as I have written a few things in relation to Henri Art Magazine that I feel are pertinent counter points and additions.
