Located at the interface of art and science, and deploying discursive, transdisciplinary methodologies, this research links fine art practice with contemporary philosophy (spatiotemporal/fractal) and evolutionary bioscience - the trajectory being to catapult the ancient medium of painting into the nanoage. Practice-based research: Taking inspiration from nature, and notably the chameleonesque, the practice-based research has been to introduce, via novel colour-shift, ‘the dynamic’ into painting – historically a decidedly static medium. And, in doing so, capture on canvas the process of oscillation between permanence and the ephemeral, the recognizable and the obscure, revelation and camouflage. The accompanying theoretical research aims to contextualize the advances of “smart” technology within the art historical and contemporary contexts of ‘naturalistic’ representation, mimesis and simulation, while also positioning this within the current emergence of similar biomimetic strategies within science. Both for scientists and artists there remains much to be garnered from nature’s ingenuity. And with the promise of new horizons heralded by the arrival of “smart” technology (which in fact copies primaeval natural nano-structures), it may well turn out that there is still life in the “antiquated” medium of painting.
In pictorial art, pigments have been used since time immemorial. However, natural colours are not only of pigmentary (or chemical) origin but often have a physical (or structural) basis. The mechanisms causing each type of colouration are fundamentally different. A substance containing pigments, such as paint, is a light-scattering material in which a certain chemical component selectively absorbs in a specific section of the visible wavelength range. The colour impression, the remaining part of the light, changes neither hue nor brightness, even when viewed from different angles. Structural colour, on the other hand, is caused by light interacting with transparent, colourless nanostructures that selectively reflect light in a certain wavelength range. Here colours are made visible via the optical phenomenon of light interference, resulting in a colour that changes with the direction of illumination and viewing angle. Although numerous attempts have been made to capture the visual impression of structurally coloured animals in painting: “... colours of this type, by their very nature, defy our best efforts at visual reproduction.”
However, thanks to sustained scientific research into nature’s iridescence-causing microstructures, the eye-catching optical effects of structural colour can now finally be introduced into painting. The development and manufacture of synthetic reflectors, notably the latest multilayer interference flakes, has recently led to a technology that offers artists the potential opportunity to accurately depict nature’s iridescence. Interweaving the findings of optical physics, material science and artistic studio practice, Schenk demonstrates here that the study of nature’s ingenious colour-generating mechanisms can indeed aid artistic innovation and application.
One of the smaller paintings created by Shenk. Images capture the transition (colour gradient) created by light reflecting on the pigment used in the process of painting.
For millennia the ‘stable’ colours, associated with chemical pigments, have been the preoccupations of painters. The rainbow, on the other hand, remained mysterious until the seventeenth century when Newton famously united light and colour through his prism experiment, proving that white light consists of all the colours of the spectrum. The changeable hues of bird feathers have kept their secrets much longer. Only in the mid-twentieth century did science verify beyond doubt what the Ancients had intuitively believed, namely that the colours of the rainbow and iridescence (a term evoking Iris, the winged messenger of the Olympic Gods and personification of the rainbow) are inextricably linked. Both phenomena are caused by light interacting with transparent colourless matter.
As can be expected this gem-like color, closely resembling that of precious stones and metals, when finally resolved by science, kindled a ‘gold rush’ in industry. From the mid-20th century the race was on to develop commercially viable synthetic versions. Sustained attempts by industry to synthesise various lead, arsenic and bismuth salts for application as pearl lustre pigments had finally come to fruition in the mid 1930s. But, while a major advance at the time, it has since taken industry a further seventy years, and a succession of pearl lustre pigment-generations (i.e. basic lead carbonate in the 1960s, bismuth oxychloride platelets in the 1970’s, followed by mica/metal oxide platelets since the late 1970’s, to eventually arrive at synthetic multi-layered nano-particles capable of mimicking nature’s iridescent hues. Unlike chemical pigments, the latter do indeed resemble the multilayer reflectors found in, for example, birds and insects. Also consisting of alternating layers of transparent, color-less materials with differing refractive indices, the platelets in question reflect and transmit light instead of absorbing it, creating color by interference.Gradually introduced since the late 1990’s, Schenk has since worked on converting these challenging materials for fine art painting.
A rainbow is created when the water droplets, like Newton’s prism, split white light into its components – the colours of the spectrum. Newton concluded that the angle-dependent colours of birds’ feathers must be equally due to light splitters (i.e. thin films), but did not comprehend the precise colour-producing mechanism. In the1950’s electron microscopy, enabling nanoscale observations, finally ascertained that the iridescence, for example, of hummingbirds is indeed produced by what effectively equates to a stack of thin-films. Here spectral colours are made visible via the optical phenomenon of constructive interference resulting in colour that changes with the direction of illumination and viewing angle.
