Title: Young Marie
Size: 76x122cm
Technique: Acrylic mixed media on canvas


“Young Marie” refers to Madame Marie Curie and the story of her life of discovery, Nobel Prizes that changed the world in so many ways. Through my work with nuclear cleanup, I became fascinated with her story and continue to learn about human nature through her discoveries and perspectives.
Loie Fuller, Lecture on Radium, January 20, 1911, London, England:
“Let us first understand what we mean by the word magic. Magic is a mystery and we call a thing a mystery because we do not understand it. There are two magics and many mysteries which are not magical, but what I wish to refer to now are those that come under the head of magic! There are two kinds of magics. I say magics in order to simplify what I mean. One kind is created by man, wherein he produces things which are magical or mysterious to everybody but himself because to him, they are simple results due to natural causes which are manipulated by him.
Then there are natures magics = called magics because no man understands them. As soon as their causes are known to man, they are no longer mysteries, no longer magics. They are natural results of material causes. Radium is one of these – nature’s magic, because as yet no one understands its being, or causes of being, nor its results of being. If radium can bring to our vision those things which we cannot see (as it does the atom), its influence cannot be measured on materialists who say, Ï’ll believe it when I see.
If it can show us thew soul as it leaves man by registering it on the photographic plate, if it can be the means of photographing our imagination, so that the eye can see it, what will we not believe, we materialists who think that only things we realized with our human senses are real. To see, to feel, to smell, to hear, to taste, these are only invisible facts – but which we acknowledge are real – the sensations of horror that kills, of grief that prostrates, joy that uplifts, and faith that cures – what if these things can be registered and seen apart from the body, are they not then material things? And may they not indicate that other invisible materials exist – which are in reality material if we had the human capacity for observing them?
Perhaps radium and its sister elements may one day help us here. We mahy not believe, but we do not know that we should not believe!”
“If a radioactive substance is placed in the dark in the vicinity of the closed eye or of the temple, a sensation of light fills the eye.”
~Marie Curie