THE PATH AS THE GOAL

Art, Science, and Spirit in Dialogue with MIT

An artist residency at MIT, at the frontier where art meets astrophysics — who could have imagined? To be nominated among just twenty artists nationwide was at once humbling and electrifying, a gift out of the blue, a constellation suddenly visible in the night sky. Anchored in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, where scientists probe dark matter, black holes, and the cosmic web, the residency offered not only a possibility but also a pause — to recognize how science, art, and spirit have been weaving together through my life all along.

"Splendid Darkness X" - Mixed Media on Canvas

Applying for the MIT Kavli Institute residency has been a profound process in itself — not only a step toward something new, but an unfolding, a fuller embodiment of my journey as an artist and human being. Sitting with the application meant looking back across more than twenty years of painting, community work, and contemplative study, and seeing how these seemingly separate paths have always been converging: science, art, and spirit.

My journey began in the laboratory, studying the heart’s electrical currents, and moved into the studio, where I’ve sought to paint the invisible energies that pulse through the cosmos and through us and make us who we are. This opportunity asked me to hold the fullness of that trajectory and recognize how it is not separate streams but one river.

The process of writing this application called me to something I had not done for decades—since I first stepped onto the path as an artist and seeker. It asked me to gather the entire arc of more than twenty years, to hold it under a lens. And what surprised me, what delighted me, was the revelation that what I once experienced as a life of disparate parts—switching hats from scientist to painter to community worker to contemplative student—was never fractured at all. It was, quietly and continuously, weaving itself into a living wholeness.

For so long, I thought I was being carried along by the sheer pace of modern life, scattered by competing demands and identities. But in pausing here, I could finally see that there were unseen currents all along, connecting each moment and role, each discipline and devotion. They were forming a pattern I could not yet recognize, but one that had been patiently, steadily, and beautifully coming into view over the years.

"Journey Inward" - Mixed Media on Canvas

And perhaps this is not just my story. Maybe what feels like fragments, shifts, and detours in our lives are not as random as they appear. Maybe we need not judge ourselves so harshly for not “having it all figured out,” or that everything must fit in a linear and tidy way. And rather, perhaps invisible threads are at work for each of us — weaving something whole, waiting for the moment when we pause long enough to see.

This realization has been alchemical: distilling fragments into wholeness, where seemingly opposites converge – where the scientific becomes luminous, the spiritual embodied, and the personal transformed into the universal. It also reminded me that rather than being consumed by outcomes—especially in a process with no guarantees—the deeper invitation is to give ourselves fully to the unfolding itself (to, quite figuratively and literally, apply ourselves to the task at hand).

It is in giving ourselves wholly to the process that Life reveals itself with astonishing elegance and grace — threads once thought disorganized, disparate, or even opposed begin to weave into coherence, illuminating a pathway forward into the next Great Mystery.

The path is the goal. ✨