Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Fine Art)

Thesis title:Art and the Visual Cortex: investigating data in the form of light to create concepts of reality.

Research: Henskens’ project questions traditional western ideas of landscape. In doing so, it raises the possibility of alternate concepts of reality beyond that conveyed by our limited range of sensual experience. Support for this position is found in the context of artists such as Seurat, Bridget Riley, and Geoff Parr. In addition, neuro-physiologists such as Semir Zeki (research scientist at the Cognitive Neurology Unit, University College, London), physicists such as Brian Green and Paul Davies all write lucidly of contemporary research for the educated layperson that extends our understanding of the human brain and the universe in which we live beyond the understanding of the world as portrayed in classical landscape.

Behind this position is the experience of having lived in three countries and acquaintance with other cultures that translate reality in somewhat different ways. Also, there was an early childhood influenced by a scientist father (research chemist with hobbies of geology and foreign languages), and a grandfather who was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. A home library of considerable dimensions fostered the habit of dabbling into classical and medical texts on rainy days; texts and books that contained exquisitely engraved illustrations. The form of these illustrations now conditions my drawing style.

To convey artistic expression of the world we now live in, I work across media, incorporating video. It is a world heavily influenced by electronic and optical communications media that nevertheless builds on earlier scientific achievements such as Newtonian physics and Euclidean mathematics. To reflect this state of affairs, I quote traditional means of painting and drawing (on paper and canvas) while using imagery and processes that depart from the expected in referencing structures and functions within the visual cortex. Film is added as being adept at suggesting flow and counterflow of data. The main focus is in fact the flux between data in the form of light and its translation within the visual cortex. The physical structures have evolved for our survival to select information; the same structures plus psychological experience feed our interpretation of what we expect to see.

The painted and drawn works are not meant to be ‘la belle peinture’ or fine drawings. They are metaphors, together with the glass screen of the video camera, for membrane. As a body of work, grouped together in space, they represent biological and technological receptors that mediate between inner and outer worlds. There is contiguity of colour, form and shape that delivers a muted buzz for the viewer in the process of walking, standing, looking and thinking. Areas of light, shade, activity and comparative rest contrive to create aspects of the sensory experience of walking through landscape with its light flows and undulating forms.