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Sunday, September 11, 2005



Isabel and her Kindergarten artwork inspired this painting. Isabel did a series of pencil drawings in Kindergarten, which I absolutely loved, and made into a small book over the summer. I traced some of the words and images into this painting and juktaposed an pictures of her from June when she was picking cherries in the back yard. Isabel says she looks sick in it, but I imagine when she's older, she may grow to like it. Or, perhaps she'll be an accomplished portrait artist and decide to burn it. I don't know how many more paintings I'll do with figures; they are a special challenge for someone who has mostly worked with abstractions.



The Virgin of the Flies, another painting inspired by Drosophila Melanogaster and my childhood in Mexico, where the Virgin of Guadalupe is a virtual obsession. Forgive my indiscretion with your Madonna, she just had to be in this painting. This painting was inspired by images of the fruitfly embryogenesis, which has some unique features. One interesting thing is that the embryo has a stage in which the nuclei divide, but the cells do not differentiate until there have been 8 or more divisions. Thus the embryo has a distinctive appearance. The adult flies in this painting are shown going through several of the stages of Drosophila courtship, which include a period when the adult male sings to his prospective partner while holding one of his wings out to the side.