Seana Reilly

"PeñaFlamenca"  Graphite on paper  20” x 20”

"TippingPoint"  Graphite on Dibond  36” x 48”

"MassWasting"  Graphite on drafting vellum  18” x 18”

"TorrentialConstant"  Graphite on Dibond  48” x 24”

"Schematic 128 (Juliet Is The Sun)"  Graphite on Dibond  30” x 18”

It is not exactly original to say that the arts and the sciences have more in common than most people imagine. But it is unusual to find an artist who incorporates scientific ideas so directly and forcefully into their work. Seana Reilly's art (I'm not sure whether I should even call them paintings or drawings) makes use of and references natural mechanical processes; gravity, fluid dynamics, sedimentation, erosion. Her material is powdered graphite that flows through a liquid medium on a non-porous surface. I love that graphite is simply a basic form of carbon, that basic building material for all of life, a perfect vehicle with which to "draw" the forces of nature. One could easily spin out gleefully on the layers of possible readings into all of this, but in the end what matters is that the images themselves are undeniably mesmerizing. Like electron microscopy or Hubble telescope images, they reveal the workings of nature in new and eye-opening ways. An earlier series of "Schematic" images was more grounded in representation, directly referencing human technologies. These are delicately corroded by the processes that would eventually become the very corps of her work. Go to her website to see many more images and don't pass up the video to get a better idea of how it's all done: www.sreilly.com
Seana Reilly's work was recently featured in New American Paintings #100