Ellipse / 20x10 / acrylic on canvas ..... When I began thinking about creating this painting for Your Brain on Art for the Branch Out Foundation, I knew I wanted to incorporate a portrait. After learning that the Neuroscientist was studying the effects of gut/brain immune response biome, I decided to expand my piece to be more figurative. The focus is on the correlation between genes & environment in treating MS and Stroke. ..... So much of what I included was symbolic...from the colours that represent stroke (red), MS (yellow) and gut (blue) to the circular shapes that represent the slides I saw and also the cyclical or top-down/bottom-up nature of the effects food we eat on our stomach (also known as the second brain) and brain. ..... I wanted this painting to be a physical, human representation of a scientific event. Seeing the vulnerability of a person looking down at the red apple and knowing how those nutrients can affect brain health. ..... During my conversation with the scientists, the image of a flower came up and I chose to include it in both the background and also in the patterns of the dress. I exchanged the pattern of black roses, moths & beetles on the original dress with images of microglia as they account for 10-15% of all cells in the brain and act as the main form of immune defense and brain maintenance. To me they also resemble the bachelor's buttons that grow in my garden. ..... The apple naturally symbolizes health and also is a symbol of the heart which connects to the mind & body. In Norse mythology, apples were given to the goddess in exchange for eternal youthfulness. ..... The title of this painting, Ellipse, is a connection between my recent studies in Astronomy, Psychology & Math and represents the cyclical nature of this process and symbolically connects the figure & fruit. ..... The difficulty was in utilizing several photographs I have taken of my daughter in the past as I currently don't have access to her. I also used my husband as a 'hand model' and had to figure out how to make the hand look like a young a lady's...my biggest challenge :) ..... Tickets to the event are available through the Branch Out Foundation.
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