I worked for DuPont before I came here as a professor.
So, I knew a little bit about color, and then I know that blue is the most difficult color
to make.
Immediately when I saw the blue color, I said wow, what's going on here.
My name is Mas Subramanian.
I'm faculty in the chemistry department.
I have a title called Milton Harris Chair Professor of Material Science.
Most of the research focuses on discovering new materials for electronics, environment.
Well, I heard about Julie Green's work before I discovered the pigment because she was having
these blue plates, The Last Supper.
So I knew about her work, and after this discovery was publisised by Oregon State University,
she contacted me and asked if I could give a lecture in her class.
I mean, to read about him in the New York times, and then ride my bike a mile and see
that is a pretty great thing about Oregon State.
This Fall, when I was teaching New Genre, I contacted Mas and we were able to get enough
of the pigment that the students all were to make a small painting.
So they got to come to the lab and learn about the pigment, and then make a tempera painting.
So they did these studies and then a few of the advanced painters did follow up paintings
too.
What I borrow from the scientific experience or view or way of approaching a problem, is
that capacity to step back and have objective looks at all sides of what you're producing.
I'm also interested in that dance of being fully engaged with a process, but also if
you're doing it right, you don't have the final destination, you're just pushing yourself
to keep dancing.
Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.
You may want to go some place, but suddenly you see something an say, wow, I want to take
a detour and then go and see this.
Then you just sometimes stop there and do more things there than the the destination.
So, when my students say the experiment didn't work, I always ask them what do you mean it
doesn't work?
something has happened.
You do look at it more carefully, because you don't know.
Maybe you emerged something better than what you were looking for.
What its value is for me as a painter who is really into creating space by using color
rather than liner or any other sort of depth tools that it's invaluable.
I've long since left behind any notion of thinking that art and science were very different
to begin with, and I kind of think about the process of what they went through as being
very similar to what we're doing in a lot of ways.
We're constantly engaging in these inquiries, cataloguing what we find, and pushing ourselves
into new grounds.
It's really research and hypothesis based.
I wonder what would happen if all of us keep doing this.
So, it's running tests all the time.
They begin with some ideas, and then they keep on tweaking it because they are.. "oh
this looks better than I thought."
In science we do the same thing.
It took science to discover new things.
Sometimes, the journey is the most important thing.
I always tell my students, we are looking for a holy grail.
The journey to find that holy grail may not be successful, but at the same time, the journey
itself is worth taking.