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Finding the Way 2017 | gouache on paper | 29.5" x 41"

A painted bunting stands in for all migratory songbirds, casting a shadow of its own internal compass rose on the rural ground below and recalling idealized pastoral scenes throughout art history. A limited range of sensory perception frames how animals, including humans, interact with the world and interpret reality. In this case limited human perception blinds us to the low-level electromagnetic hum of cities that creates navigational interference for birds that rely on magnetoreception for migration.

This painting sprang from my 100 Days of Science in Art project. A broader investigation of electromagnetism and the fundamental forces in physics led me down an unexpected rabbit hole of bird science, an unplanned but enlightening diversion in that it opened up the another line of thinking about how the things that living creatures can see, hear, feel, or otherwise detect both inform and limit our understanding of the world we occupy. I was already thinking along these lines, but the ability of birds to detect the Earth's electromagnetic field became a perfect metaphor for this phenomenon for me. It demonstrates a shortcoming in human ability to directly sense basic realities of nature, and in doing so reinforces the need for open, but still critical, thinking. Since Michael Faraday first suggested the idea of electromagnetism (watch episode 10 of the new Cosmos for an easy-to-digest overview on that), humans have developed tools that allow us to detect it. They are supplements to our natural sensory deficits. But there was a time not so long ago when this very basic part of the natural world seemed outright nutty. That we have been able to think abstractly in ways that has allowed us to imagine possible realities that are not obvious to our senses and then develop tools and methods that have allowed us to test and confirm or reevaluate our ideas is one of our more impressive and hopeful human abilities.

And like migratory birds, we are on a continual path of navigating our way through this world and universe that we call home. In a sense, this work comes from a place of exploration, of personal change, and of trying to keep in mind that there is more than meets the eye. Because in the end, we are all just trying to find our way.

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