2022 Pretty in Pink, part I – Painting Series

This series felt like going back to the start when the idea of painting what I see under the microscope first sparked. I did a lot of paintings featuring special stains and I never really focussed on creating “in H&E”. I noticed this around Christmas last yeah when I was thinking about what would be next on my painting list. I felt the urge to go back to this first spark and this is how the idea for this series was born.

I first had this thought when I spent two weeks in a laboratory and learned a lot about blood cells and admired how pretty they look under the microscope. And I still have it today when I am working on a case. It’s pure fascination when looking down the microscope and it actually increases when I now get to correlate with what I see when cut the tissue.

I am not sure if this kind of fascination will ever leave me, I hope not as it is what drives me in creating the artwork you can find on this page.

There are a few things I learned while creating this series. Number one is obvious: larger paintings take a long time to paint. I increased the size of the paintings a bit for this series because I wanted/needed more space. Still, I underestimated this quite a bit as this series took me about 3 months of on-off painting. But I love how they turned out and I feel like I got one step closer to my artistic vision in order to transport the fascinating world under the microscope (and paint some murals one day).

The second lesson learned was that it is even harder to let go of a painting after putting in some hours of work. I started the hair follicle painting twice but it did not work the way I wanted it to. Figuring that out after 4 hours of work and half a Saturday spent is quite painful. The third lesson learned is that there are no decent scanners for paintings that size available (even if the internet tells you otherwise..). But I found an excellent solution in a smaller scanner and so can now finally bring you this shop update!

This shop update includes new prints&postcards, some very pink scrunchies and new stationery. I designed a new notepad, called the “Let’s Go!” list with the Retina painting in the background which has 15 task points to check off! Who doesn’t love checking boxes?!