statement
Bryan Christie was born in 1973 in New York City. He grew up around artists; his mother was a painter and his father an illustrator. At 11 he began playing saxophone and went on to graduate from LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts. He shifted from music to the visual arts when at 20 he began interning for his father's illustration and animation studio, SlimFilms.
At age 24 he was hired as an art director for the magazine Scientific American and fell in love with science and its visual communication. He discovered a similarity between the magazine's editors and the artists heíd grown up around; they both had a passion for seeking reality. He came to understand that science and art are branches of the same tree, both giving meaning and context to the world but from different perspectives and modes: namely, logic and reason for science and intuition and emotion for art.
In 2002 he started his own scientific illustration studio, Bryan Christie Design. The studio specializes in medical, anatomical, and architectural illustration. His studioís work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, WIRED, Esquire, and National Geographic.
n 2005, he visited Michelangelo’s Pieta in Rome and describes it as "a truly was a spiritual experience. To see how stone could be turned into flesh, and that flesh—the way Michelangelo sculpted it—could hint at something of the spirit. I was looking at three things at once; I was looking at spirit; I was looking at flesh; I was looking at stone. When I saw that this concrete, inert material could hint at something, could be a window into something so sublime, so beautiful, it completely changed the direction of my life. And it was at that point that I decided to start making art in earnest.”
In explaining his painting technique, Christie says, Using 3-D software I create renderings that are visually similar to MRIs. To create the imagery I pose an anatomically correct human model with its internal system in virtual 3-D space. These models are the same I use for the medical and anatomical illustrations my studio creates. I composite multiple layers of these images in Photoshop. From there I print each layer on silk. Covering a panel with encaustic I lay the layers of silk on it and then weld them to the encaustic using a blow torch and heat gun.
I look at my work,î Christie says, ìas a meditation: a search for our hidden infinite nature. By using layers Iím obscuring some of the imagery. My experience of life is that much is obscured, from the physical to the emotional to the spiritual. Our epidermal layer obscures our fat and musculature and skeletal system. Emotionally I am unclear much of the time with what is bringing up the feelings I experience. I rarely experience the wonder and mystery of life; this is obscured by the grind of daily life and the realities of corporeal existence. I believe this obscuring and layering is a requisite in being human.î He goes on, ìEverything is so fleeting; everything is changing constantly; there are beautiful things happening; there are awful things happening. Thereís birth; thereís death. But I hope that if we step away from it and see it in its totality, thereís a certain beauty to it all. And from a certain perspective, itís all perfect.
bio
born: 1973, New York City
selected publications
The World Starts Making Sense, Sandra Rendgen, January 2015
Bryan Christie: Our Hidden Infinite Nature, Quantum Art Review, September 2014
Art Voices "Bryan Christie" Cover story, Spring 2014
Scientific American, Symbiartic, September 2014
selected solo or two-person exhibits
"Bryan Christie: In The Body Of The World" Manifest, Cincinnatti, January 2015
"Burnished Heart" BAHS, New York, NY, September 2014
"Flesh And Blood", Cyrus, New York, NY, February 2011
"Bryan Christie", Michigan State University, January 2007
selected group shows
"180& #730;: Encaustic In Contempory Art", The Curator Gallery, New York, NY, July 2015
"The Infinite Conversation", Castle Fitzjohns, New York, NY, March 2014
"Fresh Paint", Manifest, Cincinnatti, OH, November 2013
"The Sublime Revisited" Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY September 2013
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