Illustration work from the past few years.

The following are images from my 2007 Senior Thesis show at Whitman College. The work itself was a detailed pen-and-ink drawing of a tree with images and text worked into its bark and branches. The drawing was 6' x 8'. Following the image set is my artist's statement from the show.

“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

— Werner Heisenberg

It is the tension between what we see and how we interpret it that generates the motivation for constructing a consistent worldview, as well as the need for constant change of perspective. There is a push and pull between the seen and the unseen: that which we know, and that which we suspect. This is not only a matter of scientific wonder and intellectual exploration, but of personal discovery, as the unseen informs the seen in the same way that a tree is known by its fruit, and its roots — though they are below the earth and therefore not visible — are nonetheless there, and as constantly changing and growing as the branches.

This dichotomy is echoed from the large scale to the small, likening the idea of the investigation of atomic properties — a science entirely built on theories about barely-observable objects — to the construction of an individual's spirituality. The image itself works on both levels, as the tree is clear and unified from a distance, but much more is revealed upon intimate viewing. The patterns of the roots and branches themselves display this natural fractal. Neither view is exclusively “correct,” because either would lose the valuable information that makes up the whole. Perhaps what we cannot see is just as important as what we can see.