THE INSIDER STORY
LIFE: the ultimate construct
I had a vision for this painting while I was taking a course on Genomics from MIT OpenCourseWare. The professor was lecturing on the chemical process of replicating DNA and my imagination was captured.
I've incorporated many visual ideas of concepts I learned in that class, such as the hand, which represents strands being separated during DNA replication by proteins so they can be duplicated. Some scientists have observed that the process can be visualized as a "hand" with the thumb being the protein mechanism (called helicase) and the reactions seem like fingers pressing in the polymerase enzymes to copy the base pairs of the DNA strand. I majored in Chemistry at University and I absolutely love the conceptual imagery of a chemical reaction. Because all of life is a massive chemical reaction of some kind!
The flowers signify how many of the DNA genes in humans are also found in some flowers. And the baby is especially significant to me because I painted him from a photo of my newborn grandson.