Painting My Thesis
Jay Sykes
Presented by Jay Sykes
Opening Dates :
August 1 – 11, 2024
10:00am – 4:00pm daily
Opening Event :
August 11, 2024, 5:30pm
‘Painting my Thesis’ is a series of works based on the figures from my doctoral thesis, ‘Protein Structure and Evolution’, intended to bridge the gap between my previous life as an academic and my current life as a creative.
‘Painting my Thesis’ is intended to bridge the gap between art and science. It is inspired by a brief conversation I had with my PhD supervisors, Professors Michael Charleston and Barbara Holland, in which they (very flatteringly!) compared a graph I produced to a Monet.
All works in this exhibition are based on figures from my PhD Thesis “Protein Structure and Evolution”. The style of the pieces depends on the nature and meaning of the figure it is based on. Each is accompanied with the original figure, as well as a brief explanation concerning its meaning for those interested.
This project is important to me as an ex-academic. Many people, upon hearing that I completed my doctorate and then withdrew from the career path I invested so much time in to pursue life as a creative, rhetoric their way around the fact that they think to do so was a waste. With these works, I intend to prove that no experience in life is wasted. My university experience informs my practice constantly. This exhibition is intended to celebrate this fact.
