Illustration: Madon­nas of Sci­ence

"The Madon­nas of Sci­ence" by Chris Shaw

On exhibit at The San Fran­cisco Museum of Mod­ern Art until June.

36″ x 48″ Acrylic on Can­vas

"Madonna of the Par­ti­cle"

"The mod­ern icons I cre­ate also con­vey infor­ma­tion, it could be a sci­en­tific con­cept, a polit­i­cal state­ment, or a pop-culture ref­er­ence. Regard­less, each icon has a story and a rea­son for existing.

In this body of work I use the Madonna as the vehi­cle to lit­er­ally carry the ideas I’ve cho­sen to por­tray. The titles are straight for­ward. How­ever, under­ly­ing and obfus­cated by the image is a rigid geo­met­ric base, over which the Madonna icon is con­structed. The geom­e­try within this base is a rid­dle to deci­pher as are many of the sym­bols within.

I’ve mainly learned about hid­den geom­e­try and sym­bol­ism in art by decon­struct­ing an art­works com­po­si­tion, then research­ing what I find, some­thing I like to do for fun. Golden ratios, spi­rals, and fibonacci sequences are eas­ily found in many types of art, but espe­cially deeply woven into icons. How and why this geo­met­ric lan­guage was used fas­ci­nates me, it ulti­mately led to cre­at­ing my own icons with their own meanings."

"This paint­ing is inspired by the recent sci­en­tific con­fir­ma­tion of the Higgs-Boson “GOD” par­ti­cle, the sup­posed sub-atomic build­ing block that gives all mat­ter mass. The name itself is enough to war­rant the cre­ation of a Mod­ern Icon. In this piece, I cre­ated a geo­met­ric foun­da­tion using shapes, curves, and ratios found in nature, and fit the fig­ure into it. The icon is also based on the types of geom­e­try found in sub atomic par­ti­cle col­li­sions, it will fit snugly into the actual image of a par­ti­cle col­li­sion which cre­ated a “God” par­ti­cle. While the paint­ing is not intended as a black-light piece, it does take full advan­tage of the flu­o­res­cent spec­trum, metal­lic col­ors, and unveils phos­pho­res­cent effects in total darkness."

  

"Madonna of Dark Mat­ter" and "Madonna of the Squid"

  

"Madonna of the Mag­net" and "Madonna of Evo­lu­tion"

"Madonna of the Micro­scope"