Caring For Caylee

A fundraising event to help a two year old girl suffering from cancer. I will be manning the face-painting both tomorrow so come show your support or show your support by donating to the family by using the link. for more information see the flyer.

The Mobil

A specially commissioned piece for a new baby.

2011 Summer Exhibition+Sale 793 Gallery

I will be exhibiting 5 paintings all summer long in the 793 Gallery summer showing. All works are for sail and the second reception is to be held on July 26th. Lots of Great and works to see so come and check it out.

Sampling of Digital Works

Uncertainty

Watercolor and pastel. Continuing once again with the Unseen Event series this piece loosely depicts the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. One of the main elements within the uncertainty principle is that we can never be sure of a partials location in space because even the mere act of observing the partial effects its position. In this piece we observe a fully formed white rose through the lens of a pair of glasses, but as we pull the glasses aside the rose is revealed to be in pieces, thus illustrating how our observation does not coincide with reality.

the Eye of the Needle

The Golden Ratio

Watercolor and pastel. Once again continuing with my unseen events series we come to a concept that every artist should be familiar with, The Golden Ratio. Used since the action Greek times the golden radio was a number discovered to exist in the proportions of anything beautiful. This measurement can be found in anything from a human face, to a flower to building and it has been observed that the closer any measurement is to the golden ratio the more beautiful it is. In my piece I illustrated this concept by displaying the Fibonacci Sequence (an extension of the Golden ratio) immuring from the yoke of a glowing golden egg. The egg represents birth, (this could be the birth of the universe, the birth of a child or the birth of a new era in time) and as the line of the spiral grows from the center of the egg we are given the impression of growing and unfolding life, with all things beautiful spreading them throughout the universe. Like Pi the Golden radio is an irrational constant, meaning the number goes on forever. So in other words beauty is a never-ending constant and will be found in any place and any time thought the universe.

Entropy prints #1, 2, 3 and 4

Zinc Plate etching. Print 2 of my new series Systems of Chaos (a sub series of my Unseen Event Series). One expression of Chaos in physics is the concept of Entropy or natures tendency to move from order to disorder. We have all experienced this every time we organize our rooms old to have it mess again in a day. Continuing with my butterfly motif, we are presented with two contrasting images, a perfect origami butterfly and the remains of a shredded origami butterfly, the whole butterfly representing order and the shredded butterfly representing disorder.

The Butterfly Effect

Plastic etching. Print 1 of my new series Systems of Chaos (a sub series of my Unseen Event Series). Ask yourself does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a hurricane in China? Most commonly associated with weather the butterfly effect is often used as a metaphor to demonstrate Sensitive Dependence or how a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, also known as the domino effect. To illustrate this idea I toyed with the idea of the butterfly effect leading to unforeseen consequences, by suggesting the butterfly in question got caught in its own storm.

String Theory

Watercolor and gouache. Continuing with “Unseen Events” series this painting represent the concept of String Theory, String Theory or M theory is an incredibly complicated process that involves scientist trying to link together all the know theories of the universe in hopes off creating One Great Unified Theory. 

Since the concept of string theory is so complicated and complex I want to give the impression of complexity within my painting. I also wanted to convey the strain that companies trying to link together concept that for hundreds of years have had seemingly nothing to do with each other. A series of strings darting off in different directions and holding in place a pair of forceps against a many layered background. The strings are stretched tight in order to convey the tension accompanying this theory and the strings are colored in variations of bone and skin tones in order to convey the notion of something organic. Thick contrasting blood spurts from where the forceps hold and where the strings are tied together once again emphasizing the strain and pain of trying to link together seemingly unlinkable theories.

Self Portrait

A self portrait in ink

Curved Space Time

Watercolor. Continuing with my “Unseen Events” series this painting represents a metaphorical explanation of curved space-time. Curved space-time is a phenomena that accurse in the presents of large gravity masses such as star or planet. The large pull of the gravity causes time and space to bend inward towards the body thus curving it (hints the name). One way we can think of how this may apply to us is to image an ant crawling across the curve of a bowl. Although it appears relatively flat from its perspective it will take that ant considerably longer to reach the other end of the bowl then if it had simply travel from rim to rim. In other words the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
In this piece I have illustrated two ants traversing a bowl, topped with the rod of a broken clock pendulum. The red ant (representing us) lags behind in the center of the bowl while the black ant has already reached the end of the pendulum rod, emphasizing the difference in distance for the two ants. The edge of the bowl and the end of the broken pendulum fill up most of the piece giving the impression of large gravitational bodies.

Gallery Show at Chemers

Lillian Anna Blouin will be featured in the Student and Faculty Art Exhibit at the Chemers Gallery, February 26 - March 12, 2011. The reception is on the 26th and anyone who wants to come can! See link for details http://www.chemersgallery.com/

A Force of Four

Watercolor. Continuing with my Unseen Events series. This painting is an allegorical still life representing the Four Fundamental Forces of the Universe; Electro Magnetism, Gravity, the Strong Force and the Weak force. The light bulb obviously represents Electro Magnetism, while the apple representing gravity links it back to the old myth about Sir Isaac Newton and the apple falling on his head. The next two are harder to understand because we do not come into direct contact with them in our daily life. The string of beads represents the Strong Force, which is the force that is responsible for binding together Atoms and the even smaller elements that Atoms are made of. The decaying berry branch in the background represents the Weak Force, which is responsible for Nuclear Decay. All these objects are positioned on top of a spiral, an ancient symbol of the Universe and positioned within a void space.

The Goldfish of Reality

Watercolor. Once again part of my Unseen Events series, this piece was inspired by a passage from Stephen Hawking's book "the grand design":
"A few years ago the city council of Monza Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have out vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish's picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?"
To illustrate this I depicted the goldfish in question swimming within the lens of an old fashioned pare of bifocals, in order to compare our view of reality with that of the goldfish. By placing the glasses at a distorted angle I illustrated our own possible distortion of reality and by leaving the fare left lens unfinished and shattered I illustrated our both unfinished and fragmented understanding of the universe.

On a Roll of the Dice

Watercolor, pastel and instant coffee. Part of my Unseen Evens series this piece was inspired partly by Einstein's famous quote "God does not play dice with the universe". What may people don't know about Einstein is that although he is considered one of the founders of Quantum Physics he became very critial of may discovery's made in its name. The quote illustrates his displeasure with the disproving of determinism and the beginning of the Uncertainty principle. According to quantum physics, no matter how much information we obtain or how powerful our computing abilities, the outcomes of physical processes cannot be predicted with certainty because they are not determined with certainty. In other words nature determines its future state through a process that is fundamentally uncertain and therefore cannot be predicted. 

      This painting was mostly experimental in nature, in many ways me trying to sharpen my abstracting skills. I depicted a series of dice being trough into an uncertain space. As the dice fall they dissolve to billions of little particles scattering everywhere and intermingling with one another. This illustrated the futility of trying to account for every variable within the universe, right down to the last partial. There is simple too much to account for.

the Expanding Universe

Part of my unseen events series this illustrates the "theory of an expanding universe", but the idea for the composition came to me from reading a Robinson Jeffer's poem. the Universe is represent by a giant heart expanding out into this endless void as bits of nebulous matter pours out from the ventricles.

A field of Contrary Forces

Part of my unseen events series, this piece illustrates "fields of force" within elector magnetism. the Shell and the bell drawn together by an unnamed force between the hands are reminisent of the silver bells and cockle shells from the mistress mary quite contrary nursery rhyme, representing positive and negative force. The two objects are than connected to a red string weaved into a cat's cradle between four hands framing the objects within its own field of force.

Unseen Events Portfolio

It is a new school year and the beginning of my senior year in college. I now expected to complete my senior portfolio in illustration. My task is to successfully illustrate a theme of my choosing in how many pieces I can complete throughout the year. I have decided on the Theme of Unseen Events illustrating the scientific theories and laws observed in literally unseen events. Challenge myself why don't I?

Singularity... Summer paintings 3

This is my interprotation of the cosmic event known as a Singularity. A brief definition a spacetime singularity is a location where the exact among of space and time within that location is 0/0, meaning it is a location so small it occupies exactly no space and time at all. In other words ~Nowhere~. Many scientist believe the universe expanded outward from a singularity and if you fell into a black hole that is eventually what your body would brake and condense into. Also there are few how theorize that once you reach the singularity in a black hole it than must expands outward into...what? One of the many things we still do not know. 

I used a pictures of sand placed under a microscope falling through my own stylized version of a Black hole Singularity.

The Birth of Color... Paintings over the summer 2

Watercolor and pastel. This is my interpretation on a myth about the birth of color. I do not know what culture this story comes from, but it goes that a girl climbs down a dry well to dig deeper for water. As she digs large patches of color bubbles up. Knowing that she had found something wonderful, she scooped up the color into individual well buckets and pulled them out. the well had produced all the colors of the rainbow except white. The village was over joyed and used the new color to create many beautiful things. So the demand for the color grew and the girl had to go back down the well more and more and more and more she went down the well to get it. soon the people of the village had covered every square inch of space in color. one day she lost her footing on the way down and fell down the shaft. The people who looked down the well after her knew that she must be dead and begin to weep with sorrow. As they morned a bright light shown from the bottom of the well and something began to bubble up from the shaft. As the villagers turned to look an enormous wave of the purest, virginal, white. 
From that day forward in honer of the brave girl the color white represents virtue, purity and light.

Paintings I Did Over the Summer

My depiction of the thought process behind quantum physics and the study of unseen events. Try and see if you can figure it out. 

Continued...Painting from 2009 part 2

This piece actually came from an assignment to illustrate the fortune in a fortune cookie. Mine said "You are an innovative problem solver". Don't ask how I came up with this. This was actually one of the finalists in a contest I entered last year. 

Continued...Painting from 2009

A rare landscape of my I entitled First light. I love the arctic.

The Prophecy series

The Series of paintings below were illustrations I did for a book my mom wrote on God and prophecy. It tells a surreal story of man kind, represented by a cutout figure of a girl with a scroll, and their journey through life as they follow to word of God. My mom could explain it better, I just did the illustrations.

Painting series from last year!

Start Blogging

Hello this is my very first blog so I do not know what to expect, but I am giving it a shot. Be gentle with me.