© Glendon Mellow 2010 |
It's always about the legs. You either recognize a tardigrade or people see a purple brain in this painting.
It's funny, but this painting kind of cemented my art-life trajectory. I had an art show back in university. One of my co-workers from the coffee shop was a zoology major. After seeing this painting, she came over and said something like, "ok, this may mean nothing to you, so if it doesn't, forget it: is that a tardigrade?" I replied it was. She said she could tell because of the hooked feet, and was really happy about it. I've always loved science, but I think it was that experience that showed me there's a huge audience in scientifically-literate people who respond to representational art for them.
Sometimes on this blog, I mention science enabling artists to expand the visual vocabulary in representational art. This is kind of what I mean.
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For my information about tardigrades (water-bears, moss piglets) head over to Catalogue of Organisms.
You can see the full painting here.
This image is available as a print or as one month in my new 2011 calendar.
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
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