Gorgonomcephalus

In late 2010 I was lucky enough to meet Sebastian Kvist, a PhD student at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Within hours of meeting him I was peppering him with questions about biology, not doing much to conceal my enthusiasm for the subject. He was kind enough to invite me and a friend on a personal tour of his lab and the innards of the museum. It was one of the most amazing experiences.

The Museum has some pretty incredible things going on behind the scenes in the labs. There are cabinets filled with skeletons of dolphins, bears, crazy looking rodents and a particularly weird primate with a steampunk pelvis. There’s even two massive Galapagos giant tortoises who roam the hallways! Since Sebastian studies leeches, we started our tour with the invertebrates: endless hallways with wall-to-wall filing cabinets, all containing the most fascinating creatures. Jellyfish, sea urchins, starfish, crustaceans, all beautifully preserved and labeled. The most spectacular thing there was a giant squid in a 25 foot tank.

But the animal that impressed me most was something I didn’t even know existed. The Gorgonocephalus is a starfish-like radially symmetrical creature with blooming curly tentacles at the end of each arm. Even dried, brittle, and colorless, it had a beautiful elegance that captivated me, so I set about painting it. I chose to paint it purple because I liked the way the purple in “Jellin” had stood out against the deep blue background. It was immensely time consuming to paint the tentacles in such meticulous detail, but once I started I had no option but to go through with it. Not quite sure what inspired me to put an “Om” symbol over the mouth, it just seemed to work there.