Art and science, are they as separate as we all believe?

Art and science, are they as separate as we all believe?

Many people think of science that is something that cannot be easily reached or understood.  As some of you may know I actually do have a science degree, a BSc. in Biology but I am not the most natural scientist.  I have a great love of science but I do not have the mathematical acumen that is so needed these days and sometimes my logic is very flawed or non-existent.  

The love I have of both science and art stems back to childhood.  I fell in love with the two subjects at the same time thus to me they are inextricably linked.  I remember the old documentaries from Magnus Pyke, he was my first scientific hero of the day. I would sit on the floor,  enthralled, watching the great man, his arms flying in all directions and love his evident enthusiasm for his subject but as I was about 5 years old, I did not understand a single word he was saying.  There was a part of the programme that showed the atomic structure in movement, this also fascinated me and made sense to my 5 year old brain but for the life of me I would not have been able to explain why & to this day, still can't.

At the same time, I was also beginning to really love art, Tony Hart was my first hero with his wonderful programme Vision On, followed later on in the 1970's by Take Hart.  They were both wonderfully compelling programmes to watch, my younger self was always inspired by all of the arts but there was also room for science.  To me, these subjects were interchangeable but at that time and sometimes even now, to many people they are not.

Looking back, I now realise how ground-breaking these programmes were, Magnus Pyke was one of the first, enthusiastic scientists I ever watched on the television & as I grew older, sometimes even understood.  Not for him the po-faced, white coated, very serious man, mumbling into his test-tubes, his  enthusiastic explanations gave me a love of science that I still have.  Since then there have been other heroes, David Attenborough, Edward Wilson, Rachel Carson, Matt Ridley & Steve Jones to name a few of many.

Art started with Tony Hart, but I was born in the 1960's.  Art and music went together in the 1960's and 1970's and these subjects were rammed home together, album covers giving me the first inclination of different types of art.  In the late 1970's, I came across art books, such as fantasy but them I was introduced to surrealism, this form of art was delightful, I have a great love of surrealism and have ideas brewing here, which will be painted in the future.  The list of heroes I have now for art are so long I would never be able to finish it but Dali deserves mention as does Boleslaw Biegas but there are so many others, they all fight for attention.

However, what does art have to do with science and what does science have to do with art?  This question is actually quite complicated & the answer not just one seamless & easy explanation.  Here I will only briefly cover how I feel about this subject, I may come back to write another blog later as the explanations are never-ending & they only lead to more questions.

Beauty is one of the answers.  Any cellular structure, whether it is a plant cell, a blood cell or a sex cell has great beauty and complexity that both fascinates and thrills the viewer.  It is a beautiful sight looking down a microscope at a cell that has been stained.  When I stared re-educating, I started with a Biology GCSE.  I was 28 years old at the time so this was 20 years ago, we had to look at cells from various parts of both plant and animal and my response? WOW! Aren't these all beautiful!  The rest of the students there, most that probably went onto become really successful scientists thought I was barking mad and really didn't understand what I was saying.  The structure, delicacy & complexity of all these stained cells were wonderful to behold and deserved respect.  All organisms right from the molecular up to the individual, their inner and outer interactions, are not only beautiful but awe-inspiring and complicated.

The Flight of the Hamsters - Escape from Planet Earth.  An alternative theory of why hamsters always run around in hamster wheels and in plastic balls; they are practising to go back to their own planet by using any means possible.

Then there is energy.  Energy is always thought of in the same genre as physics and it is, but EVERYTHING has energy. Organisms such as people, butterflies, dolphins, brainwaves, trees, nervous systems & grass, I could go on.  Some artists can feel energy, I am one of those artists.  I cannot explain it, there is very little I can say except that when I visit a place I can feel the waves of energy that come from it.  This is also related to both art and science because energy is life, from the smallest bacteria to elephants and huge redwood trees, to the land itself.

This painting is an Energy painting.  It is my interpretation of how Glastonbury Tor in Somerset feels & is called The Healing.  I will not add much more to this because different individuals see different things and also feel differently about they see.

Most of my work do have energy forms within them, I leave that to the viewer to find what they are but I shall be marrying life, art, science again in the future because we do not always appreciate the beauty that is right in front of us.  Many of us do not see the beauty within an organism, how they interact together and their inner reactions. And because there is not the appreciation or understanding of how beautiful we all are and of the world around us, people take everything for granted and some go further by destroying what is not only our heritage but that of all of our futures.

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Trac Davies - Artist ©