Universe Within

Over the past year, my family found ourselves navigating unfamiliar territory when my youngest son, Leo, was diagnosed with epilepsy and FND.

I did what I tend to do when I don't understand something: I became hyper focused and completely consumed by going down various rabbitholes of information, trying to better understand. I disappeared for months into books, research papers, podcasts on neurology, movement disorders, seizures, and consciousness. 

The more EEG's, imaging and testing the doctors did, the more questions I had.

And somewhere in all of that searching, I became fascinated by how little we still understand about the human brain. When I finally sat down to paint and externalize everything this is what emerged.

Universe Within.

Serindipitious things occured while I was  working on painting this one. My oldest son, Easton and I went and saw The Life of Chuck, which explores a similar concept in a King way.

Then, about a week later, I was reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and came across one of my favorite Carl Sagan thoughts again:

“The Cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.”

There it was again. Consciousness trying to understand consciousness.

Universe Within grew out of a stressful chapter of my life, but I don't think the painting itself is about illness. I think it's about wonder, adaptation and learning to sit with complex unknowns.

I'll be submitting Universe Within to Ryan Observatory this week. It is 24x30" in size. If you want dibs on it, you can find more info here, the product link allows you to schedule a video call to see it in more detail and discuss purchasing.