Blue Cocoon
by Shoshanah Dubiner
Title
Blue Cocoon
Artist
Shoshanah Dubiner
Medium
Painting - Gouache On Hot Press (smooth) Watercolor Paper
Description
�Blue Cocoon� was inspired by two photographs taken at UC San Francisco�s Jan Lab. One showed undifferentiated cells in a fruit fly embryo; the other, taken 10 hours later, showed a fully formed fruit fly nervous system.
Neurobiologists Yuh-Nung Jan and Lily Jan wrote: �The birth of the nervous system remains one of the fundamental mysteries of biology.� How do neurons arise from undifferentiated cells? How do they differentiate into individual shapes and identities? And how do they organize themselves into nervous system pathways that spread throughout an organism? My painting is not a scientific answer to those questions, but rather a contemplation of the awesome and complex process by which forms arise in living organisms.
The painting began with the small cocoon or womb that contains the undifferentiated cells; a system of interconnected cocoons followed, showing not only the nervous system of the fruit fly, but also the nervous system of imagined reptiles. The cycle of life and death is displayed inside cocoons where humans mate, egg meets sperm, a baby waits in the womb and finally, a human skeleton is folded in a fetal position (the same position in which some ancient cultures bury their dead). All the living creatures are contained in a still larger blue cocoon or womb. Outside that, like the figure of Yama in Tibetan Buddhist art, is the gaping mouth of Death, holding life in its giant claws. Everything in the blue cocoon will eventually fall away, disintegrate, become the elements of new life forms that will eventually arise. ATTENTION: Painting is best reproduced on SMOOTH PAPER, NOT CANVAS OR TEXTURED PAPER.
Uploaded
November 27th, 2009
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