Cressida's Transformations - art and photography DAN SERIG - Neuro Artist written by Kathleen Notman   Click here to return  Many viewers might see Dan Serig's images as spiritual. "Go forth!" - the branches of intelligence seem to say. So where did it all begin? What inspired this artist to explore Neuro Art? It can be traced back to the hours he spent sketching trees. He was fascinated with branches. Furthermore he loved to draw hands. When as a teaching artist he became interested in brain research and how people learn, he looked at photographs of the brain. It was the dendrites (the ends of neurons that transmit electrochemical messages to other neurons) that he became intrigued by. While the photographs of the brain he looked at couldn't show what dendrites look like, his artistic vision of them was "similar to the limb-like qualities of branches and human appendages". Dan Serig was born thirty-two years ago when scientific research into the nervous system was leaping forth through the discovery of the electron microscope. While he was growing up, observing and absorbing images of the world around him - the landscape, the human form - neuroscientists were trying to find the biochemicals of emotion, the nexus of mind and body. The viewer can see in Dan Serig's intelligent paintings, the bond between mind and body, with the influence of the landscape. His image "Spiritual Mindset" is thought provoking as well as beautiful. Like the images of the brain as seen through an electron microscope, all his paintings are powerful and bold. "Firing Synapse" is a truly profound image that portrays his impression of an action that takes place within the brain. (A synapse is the junction across which a nerve impulse passes from an axon terminal to a neuron, muscle cell or gland cell.) "Firing Synapse" reveals Dan Serig's philosophy of wanting the viewer "to become aware of their mental processes and connections that bind our human form, both externally in physical form and microscopically in neurological form". Dan Serig is a prolific artist and presently pursues his art full-time. Examples of the work of this talented artist can be seen on his web site. Go to "LINKS" on the site map of Cressida's Transformations to click on his address.