Artist Bio

Cheryl Cotman received a B.A. in Biology from Reed College and a M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts. Her work deals with science, and the hidden side of nature it reveals. An unusual method is involved. She becomes immersed in the concepts and methods of her topics, sometimes going so far as to engage in basic research, in search of an artistic direction or interpretation. The results often have a singular esthetic quality, combining a sense of the naggingly familiar (reflections of nature) and the strange (images of type never before seen). Her art has the potential of allowing the viewer to experience the presence of science in worlds outside its normal boundaries, as in how discoveries in the brain sciences affect the way we view human nature. Her artwork highlights essential concepts in a recent book, "Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence". Cotman's drawings have appeared in numerous scientific publications and meetings and were featured in a prominent monograph. Her work is part of the Creative Arts Agency collection and her larger works have been shown at various museums and galleries, including Norma Desmond Productions, Space On Spurgeon, Oceanside Museum of Art, the Beall Center, Track 16 at Bergamot Station and the Basel Art Fair.

Artist Statement

Cotman's work stems from a diversity and unity of materials and methods; it is usually but not always collaborative. Her materials and methods may be distinguished into background techniques and foreground techniques. Foreground materials are the finished product, what the viewer sees: one preferred medium is pencil and paper; others have included vinyl, hologram, cloth, rubber, soles from a pair of children's shoes (size three prewalkers), frog legs, digital imagery and ink pen. Background materials here refers to techniques, tools, approaches, source materials, and mountains of research that form the deep background and course that leads to the finished product that the viewer encounters. For example, a recent series of works depict scattering arrays of warships in a peculiar looking sea. On closer inspection the viewer encounters an ocean with atypical characteristics. The ocean is, in fact, composed entirely of experimental data from a laboratory where the principle focus is the study of memory. The works were developed over years of collaboration, conversation, and research with a notorious brain scientist.

The richness of Cotman's finished work that rewards sustained attention, focus, and contemplation is nested in nature. Her work translates intense or deep scientific detail into visual form. She cannot do this carelessly or inaccurately. To her a sloppy or made-up version would be deeply false, a misrepresentation. The works are aesthetic: they are an aesthetic representation of these scientific worlds: worlds of data, of human striving and interaction. What may not be so immediately apparent is the intent fidelity to the data. Fidelity to the data is an essential element in Cotman's work. Cotman believes that this fidelity inevitably affects the viewer, whether layperson or expert, the density of the work – somehow imbibes the original depth of the data. Yet this effect on the viewer is not in fact the actual or original goal of this fidelity. The fidelity is required, is absolutely demanded, for its own sake. Required, Cotman would say, by the data of her.

Each piece embodies the result of engrossed months or years of research. In one respect it may be compared by analogy to a reporters', or a certain type of novelist's, work: large amounts of research behind the finished product; in this case, rather than text, visual art. This does or may seem to make it difficult for the viewer who is lay in a given field to comprehend a given work. But how does a layperson in a given field relate to a Cotman work? Attention is repayed: whether the technical details are already familiar to the expert in a field, who sees in them a delightful re-presentation, full of aesthetic quality. But the lay viewer as well can see in a Cotman work the depth and richness encountered in nature. As Kant points out, one does not need to need to know the biological function of a flower in order to appreciate its beauty. Cotman's work works at multiple levels. Upon stepping closer the viewer may feast on delicate pencil lines; at distance the lumps of color and form relieve the detail of radars and electrode recordings into abstract color fields. The multiple levels repay sustained attention and repay again and again in further ways on different occasions.

The humor, the unexpected juxtaposition (even goofy), the seriousness, the obsessive attention to accuracy, detail and background knowledge are important qualities of Cotman's work. Her visual interpretation or representations of the natural world revel in its inventive detail.

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