Touching Adam: What’s behind the paint?

Hundreds of paintings, varying in medium, style, size, and subject matter, were on display in a recent city-wide art show. Some canvases expressed political opinions or social commentary. Many paintings, however, lacked an obvious message, but were nonetheless intriguing, provocative, or challenging, eliciting in me a variety of emotional reactions—sometimes that’s exactly what an artist intends.

Most of my own work is nonrepresentational. Rather than conveying specific messages, I seek to elicit in the viewer thoughtful or emotional responses, hoping that people will interact with what is before them in some way. I wonder, however, whether some viewers, rather than “experiencing” one of my paintings, are looking for a message or meaning, and, finding none, walk away asking themselves, “What was that about? What was the artist’s intention?” I would like to have a conversation with those people because even though they may not find a hidden message, there is an intent behind the painting, a history or experience to its creation, a reason it came to be.

Sometimes colors and shapes appear to be just colors and shapes, devoid of philosophical, religious, or political content, but that is not to say they were placed on the canvas haphazardly, without thought or intention. While aleatory art does focus on the unpredictable and random (inviting free-associations from viewers), more often colors and shapes are chosen and purposefully arranged to elicit a particular effect or emotional reaction. Either way, artists hope that viewers will be drawn into a painting, be affected by it and find value in the experience.

Touching Adam

Even in nonrepresentational art, however, there may in fact be a subtle message the viewer has missed. My painting, Touching Adam, recently part of that city-wide art show, is a such a painting. The title, referencing Michelangelo’s famous Creation of Adam fresco in the Sistine Chapel, is a clue to what I see in the painting.

While the painting, Touching Adam, can be appreciated without “knowing its meaning”, it does play on Michelangelo’s masterpiece and is intended to convey a different view of human origins. In Michelangelo’s fresco, God is creating man in his own image. In this portrayal, Adam becomes fully human when God reaches down from heaven to touch Adam’s finger. In my painting, Adam does not emerge into consciousness fully formed by divine action, rather Adam (the smaller forms on the right side of my painting) is in the process of forming out of a larger mass of similar material.

Creation of Adam

This is not to discount any religious view about the meaning of human existence, but simply places humans in the context of an evolutionary process that occurred over the earth’s four billion-year history. Human beings have a special place among all other organisms by virtue of the fact that we have evolved to be rational, sentient beings, capable of moral choice, but we are not separate from other organisms—our continued existence depends upon our connection to the ecosystems in which we live. Touching Adam is an evolutionary statement, acknowledging that our species (“Adam”) emerged out of past life forms. We came to be because of what came before. We exist because of what surrounds us.

My training as a biologist certainly influences how I think of this painting. Your interpretation of the painting may differ. Perhaps you simply see a peaceful stream of color drifting through an otherwise empty sky—no hidden message, only something to experience.

Peace . . .