2003

blood on watercolor paper

12"H x 12"W each

Thought Patterns is a series of images inspired by neuroanatomical structures. Each drawing was created using blood taken from my fingertips as the primary medium. The series explores the relationship between the images being depicted and the source of the medium with which they are drawn. I was drawn to these images as a formal exploration of the elements of our body that tell us we sense pain or pleasure. The images of neurons and other brain structures evoke the complex psychological and physiological responses our body has to outside forces. The forms of the brain structures act as visual metaphors for the extreme complexity and delicate fragility of the human body.

Reviews:

Austin Chronicle, August 6, 2004

...“Thought Patterns,” is very clearly a series of intricate, fully-formed systems of fancifully rendered nerve colonies and synapse bundles, so extremely fine in detail that I found myself nearly pressing my nose up against the glass that protects these complex and mysterious little creations. As I experienced each, it drew me into the center of itself, offering me glimpses into the endlessly potential space between attraction and repulsion, comfort and pain, passion and detachment. A painless, but hair-raising, spiritual balancing took place in me as I stared into the vortices and mandalas Splan had so generously pulled from her very being..." (Campbell, VC Reporter, 2003)