Arvid's Gallery - How We Came To Be
Concerning How We Came To Be - Full Painting
Acrylic on gouged wood
87" X 77.5 " (221 cm X 191 cm) framed.
Among my friends at Cambridge were research students in quantum mechanics and in astronomy. I had read up on these subjects so that I wouldn't be entirely dumb. My interest in astronomy stems from that time, and also because of an extraordinary event.
I lived on Cavendish Avenue, as did P.A.M. Dirac, the Nobel laureate in quantum physics, whose discoveries in atom physics changed the astronomical research. I was surprised to get an invitation to lunch at the Diracs. I believe that Professor R. B. Braithwaite, whose portrait I had painted, must have mentioned to Dirac that a Canadian research student lived near his residence. Dirac had a great number of sketches, mostly in pencil, made by English artists. He agreed to sit for a sepia sketch.
Obviously, my experiences at Cambridge are part of the explanation of why the Concerning How We Came To Be was done. But the idea of this work began to take shape because I had bought a woodworking tool - a router - in order to make the mouldings. Once I had bought the router bits for that purpose, and had some experience of how to work with them, I saw that they could be used to gouge wood for artistic purposes.
The design elements of this particular work - the circles, straight grooves and sinuous grooves - are all made by the use of the router. The recessed gouges have perfectly sharp edges even when they are tiny.
I should mention that another Canadian artist, Paterson Ewen, who died in the early 90's, had used the router technique on plywood sheets, which he then stained to reveal the accidental patterns in the plywood.
Instead of using plywood, I construct a wooden panel by bisquing 1' X 8" poplar boards. This way, I am not limited by the size of the plywood sheets, and I avoid the toxic dust. Unfortunately, my panels are very labour intensive.
I wanted to depict the mind boggling infinity of the cosmos, and the idea that new stars are being born. The title of the painting refers to Sir James Jeans' speculations that life on our planet was the consequence of a lucky accident of sub-atomic activity.
-Arvid Grants
click for full size picture click for full size picture click for full size picture click for full size picture click for full size picture click for full size picture
