String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe – from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies – are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.
—Brian Greene,The Elegant Universe
[From October 2014]
I’ve done several paintings through the years using textured surface that has bands or strings that twist and turn throughout. It’s an extreme texture, more pronounced on than my typical surfaces, and, as a result, takes center stage in these pieces. They become the driving force in the painting.
These bands that run through these paintings always spur something in me, some sense of wonder at the great unknowns of our world and universe. The painting shown here, Here There Everywhere, certainly does this for me. Looking at it, I am filled with questions about the world or worlds that lie just past our perceptions. Are there other dimensions, other pasts and futures swirling around us at any moment? And if so, are we connected in some way to this web of chaotic energy or are we merely physical beings, unwitting bystanders in the great dance of the universe?
In this painting, the Red Tree serves as the questioner, living in the moment but recognizing the forces that permeate everything and give that moment a discernible depth and meaning beyond the simple beauty it can physically observe. I know that I have had that feeling. I might be out driving and see a certain curve of a field, a bend of a tree or the filtering light from the sun and suddenly feel an intense emotional response that seems to have no basis of origin in my past, one so strong that I find myself asking why and where it came from.
Perhaps this indefinable emotional is a brush with these other worlds, these energy forces?
I certainly don’t know. Part of me wishes it to be so but part of me simply wants to savor that moment and emotion without questioning it. Something to ponder on a gray autumn morning.
Or something to ponder on a damp spring morning nearly ten years later. I was looking at this painting this morning in the studio for a few moments. It is one that made the gallery rounds and came back here years ago. I only used that sort of whirling texture in a handful of pieces around that time in 2014. They were all quite striking, as is this piece, but I never really employed that texture after those pieces.
This piece has a sort of elegant feel to me, almost regal. It certainly doesn’t feel like an orphan painting that never found a home. Maybe it’s more like exiled royalty than orphan.
But beyond its feel, it serves as a constant reminder of string theory which I roughly described in another post about another painting from around that time:
It reminded me of one of the supposed byproducts of the string theory which is a very speculative area of quantum physics. Without going into the scientific basis for the theory (which I couldn’t do very well anyway), string theory basically creates a platform where extra dimensions– it is speculated that there may actually be at least nine dimensions– could and may exist alongside the dimensions that we know and dwell within, without our knowledge of their existence. A simplified example of how this might work is the way we are surrounded by radio signals all the time without our knowledge but with the proper receptor, a radio, they become apparent. With string theory, perhaps there are also parallel dimensions around us without our knowledge, dimensions that contain others forms of energy, other forms of existence.
People have used this as theoretical basis for many things such as time travel, the existence of UFOs, and things supernatural such as ghosts and other spectral occurrences. The string theory has been a very fertile field for science fiction writers to work.
Perhaps it also provides a place where the soul, the source of energy that animates the body, ultimately dwells. Perhaps there is the energy of souls all around us in these alternative dimensions. Maybe the photons we see are also the part, a facet, of something unseen. That’s how I see the sky in this painting, as masses of disparate energies that we only see partially in the dimensions we can detect.
None of this has much to do with anything this morning. At least not here, in our meager world of limited dimensions. But it gives me something different to think about and that’s got to be worth something, right?
Here’s a lovely song whose title sort of inspired the title for the painting above. It’s the Beatles and Here, There and Everywhere.
Now, listen then leave quietly without disturbing my strings…
Redtree Times 