Dartmouth Medical School
Department of Genetics
7400 Remsen
Hanover, NH 03755
Genetics.Department@Dartmouth.edu
603/650-1907
Transcription on lavender ground*
Floating Map (template)*
MJ Morse is an artist whose abstract art draws its inspiration from the invisible molecular world. Trained both as an artist and as a scientist with a Ph.D. in biology, she has brought her artistic skills and scientific knowledge together in the creation of a series of oil paintings entitled Molecular Intimacies. These capture and make visible the intricacies and mysteries of life at a molecular level. The two paintings donated by Dr. and Mrs. Morse are from this series.
Entitled "Floating Map (template)" and Transcription on lavender ground," these paintings vividly portray the unseen world of molecules and the fundamental activity of DNA. "Floating Map (template)" combines squares of brilliant purples, oranges, reds and yellows that float against a rich purple background and produce a stunning visual effect. This profusion of geometric shapes and colors could clearly suggest a large multiple protein complex, for example the enzyme complex responsible for transcription, a fundamental molecular process. This process, in which RNA is copied, or transcribed, from a DNA template is vividly represented in "Transcription on lavender ground." Interwoven strands of blues and greens, representing a DNA double helix, give way to a brilliant strand of orange representing the RNA molecule as it is copied from the DNA template, above which is a single strand of blues and greens. All of this takes place against a soft lavender background. Painted in oils on gessoed paper, these brilliant paintings use the visual medium of artistic expression to reveal the hidden microscopic world of genes and genomes.
