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Cumulative Effect: Cajal Inventory Drawings



"If a solution fails to appear ... and yet we feel success is just around the corner try resting
for a while... Like the early morning frost, this intellectual refreshment withers the parasitic and nasty vegetation that smothers the good seed. Bursting forth at last is the flower of truth."

― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator



My work has profoundly influenced my artistic practice and aesthetic interests as a medical illustrator for the new edition of Human Neuroanatomy, published by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing in 2017 by Dr. James R. Augustine, University of South Carolina School of Medicine. While creating illustrations for this textbook, I researched the history of brain anatomy illustration and was particularly struck and inspired by Cajal's drawings because they possess artistic merit and a particular type of observation.



I am creating a series of drawings and paintings titled Aesthetic Instincts: the Intersection of Art and Science in Santiago Ramón y Cajal's life. The installation is a comprehensive biographical creative project that, through visual art, examines and represents the life of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (May 1, 1852 – October 17, 1934). Cajal was a Spanish scientist and the first person to demonstrate that the nervous system was made up of individual units (neurons) independent of one another but linked together at functional contact points called synapses​. Cajal illustrated his studies' results with elegant drawings of neurons that he proposed work independently or collectively. Each unit can participate simultaneously in individual or multiple neuron functions. Cajal was a 1906 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine awarded jointly to another neuroscientist, Camillo Golgi, "in recognition of their work on the nervous system structure," however, their research was mutually exclusive and embraced opposing theses. Santiago Ramón y Cajal is considered by many to be the father of modern neuroscience.



Cajal Inventory Installation



Featured in this post are works from my Cajal Inventory. The forty-five drawings are 11" x 14" each and created through a combination of the following materials: graphite, ink, pen, marker, and acrylic. The drawings are biographical of Ramón y Cajal and my creative process within this project, i.e. some works are my notes from Dr. Augustine's Fundamentals of Neuroscience course that evolved into completed drawings. Cajal's biographical portraits are comprised of Cajal, his wife Silveria, and their children.



Portrait of Cajal Juxtaposed with Retina Drawing marker, pen, and ink on paper, 11" x 14"



I view my new drawings and paintings as educational tools that address art, history, and neuroscience. After I read his autobiography, Recollections of My Life, a part of me felt like some critical aspects of Ramón y Cajal (his humor and how he imagined himself, particularly in his youth) were absent from the mainstream discourse patterns about him. My artwork highlights his personality traits and his private value system, essential to his unique scientific insight that led to his great discovery: that the nervous system is comprised of individual, independent biological units, i.e., neurons. The images here are a fusion of surreal and hyper-real portraits, domestic scenes, and recreations of Cajal scientific drawings. I have reconstructed his scientific drawings by studying his actual work on display at the National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD. I have also re-created some of his lost childhood drawings based on the description in his biography.



Cajal and Golgi, Marker pen, ink and acrylic on paper, 11" x 14"



When I recreate his scientific drawings, I draw the whole situation of each drawing. Shadows cast from the drawings are included, as are the boundaries created by the mats. I do this because his drawings were constructed with unconventional formats. Not only does this approach make spending long hours researching and drawing his works more creatively interesting, but more importantly, it serves to emphasize the content and context of his research.



Retiro Park Statue Juxtaposed to Retina Cells marker and Pen on paper, 11" x 14"



I have been fascinated with the combination of complements in my visual art. I have applied this to the form (color selection and composition) and my Cajal Inventory's content (opposing personalities). In color theory, it is said that complements incite maximum vividness or annihilate each other.​



Replication of Cajal's Developing Cortex drawing marker and pen on paper, 11" x 14"



Cajal's marriage to Silveria Fañanás García is an example of a highly functional complementary pairing. In choosing a mate, Cajal selected a woman whose character attributes were what he perceived to be a "perfect" complement to his. In doing so, he believed that their union would be a great accomplishment or matrimonial disaster. He said publicly that he would not be Cajal if it were not for his wife, and he credits her much with making his work and the depth of his research possible. She incited his maximum vividness.



Summer Solstice acrylic, ink and pen on paper, 11" x 14"



Replication of Cajal Cerebellum drawing marker, pen and ink on paper, 11" x 14"



Cajal Inventory detail



Cajal's Family photo juxtaposed with Retina Cells and the Ocean pen, ink and acrylic on paper, 11" x 14"



This work celebrates Cajal and his birthday (May Day). I am symbolically mirroring Cajal's application of complementary contrast in his marital union. Therefore I elected to use (as defined by Johannes Itten) a harmonious hexad comprised of three complementary pairs of hue from the color wheel: blue-violet and yellow-orange, red and green, and yellow-green, red-violet. Integrated within the pageantry of images are Cajal's neural drawings, May Day flowers, and Cajal's portraits of his wife, Silveria, and their children.



Class notes from Fundamentals of Neuroscience Course, School of Medicine, University of South Carolina pen and ink on paper, 11" x 14"



Replication of Cajal´s Growth Cones in the axons of developing
Cells mark, pen and ink on paper, 11" x 14"



A selection of seven works from an earlier phase of this series is currently on view alongside Cajal's scientific drawings at the NIH's John Porter Neuroscience Research Center. Learn more about that exhibition here: National Institute of Health Santiago Ramón y Cajal exhibition and symposium.​


―Dawn Hunter, September 2016


Cajal Inventory arrangement prior to intallation



Silveria Juxtaposed with Cortex Cells and Butterflies pen, ink and acrylic on paper, 11" x 14"



Dawn Hunter with some of the drawings from the Cajal Inventory at the Instituto Cajal, Madrid, Spain



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