In celebration of Santiago Ramón y Cajal's birthday, annually I create a new drawing or painting. This year I drew a portrait where Cajal is positioned at the edge of the format, and through composition and surrealism explore his tendency to think of subjects in tandem, specifically the past and the shaping of the present by the past. In this drawing there is represented a fusion and juxtaposition of his thoughts & perceptions of neural networks and his recollections of his explorations of abandoned castles of his youth. With total and heightened awareness, I would say that Cajal lived his daily life in three parallel states: recollecting the past, active discovery in the present, and visualizing the future. In his biographies he makes clear how much his scientific observations were shaped by his boyhood perceptions & experiences.
May Day 2015, graphite and ink on paper, 5" x 13"
An excerpt from Merlin's Song by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes."
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