Category: News

Here is the complete collection of my conceptual covers for The Lancet Oncology. These were a rare treat to work on. Having the opportunity to create conceptual art is not as common as it once was. There was a time when pharmaceutical advertising was allowed much more creative freedom, and I love creating conceptual art.

The thinking behind each image was quite involved and required a lot of challenging problem solving. Really fun!! I would like to explain my concept for each image here, however that would be an excessively long blog post, so if you are interested, I would direct you to my Instagram account: @audragerasbiomedicalart  All of my covers have been posted there along with explanations of the thinking behind each.

Hope you enjoy these!

As I said in my previous post, I’ve been selected to create all 12 of The Lancet Oncology’s conceptual cover images for 2024. The selection was made through a competitive process and I feel very honoured to have been chosen as this year’s artist.

Here is my first cover!

The manuscript the image is based on compares two different therapeutic approaches in the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma. The central element in the image is a gnarled and menacing-looking tree with branches representing the paths of metastases/invasive cancer spread. The leaves are loosely representative of urothelial carcinoma cells and reference invasive urothelial cancer histology. The droplets (representing therapeutic drug infusion) carry both monoclonal antibody and a platinum-based chemotherapy molecule (I chose Cisplatin as the molecule). On the bottom left and mid-right, monoclonal antibody molecules (violet) are shown binding to PD-L1 receptor molecules (blue) embedded in the cell membrane of a urothelial cancer cell.

I’ve already completed the art for the February and March editions of  The Lancet Oncology. I’ll be sharing the entire collection once I finish all twelve of the images.

 

 

This is just a tease to let people know to look out for The Lancet Oncology’s 2024 issues beginning this coming January. I am very excited to announce that I have been selected as the artist who will create all of their 2024 cover images!! It was a competitive selection process, so this was a very nice surprise. I am especially thrilled as The Lancet Oncology’s covers are never literal scientific interpretations, they are always artistic, conceptual images inspired by one or two featured manuscripts. I love doing conceptual work and it is always huge fun to have an opportunity to let my creativity fly loose. The first image is already completed and I’m really looking forward to being inspired by future manuscripts. Stay tuned!

 

 

OK… big subject!
Aesthetics play an absolutely essential role in pretty much everything I do, and that includes my biomedical art. I am very sensitive to aesthetic qualities, as well as being a colourist. That said, in my work, of course scientific accuracy must always prevail. This constraint is one of the intriguing challenges everyone in my profession faces, but it need never exclude aesthetic qualities – the subtlety of a line, the beauty of a curve, the richness of colour, or the sensitivity of a rendering. I feel passionately that it is these mysterious qualities that attract the viewer, hold their attention, and most importantly promote the learning process by engaging the senses as well as the intellect.

Joseph Campbell wrote that “A real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render… the ‘radiance’ of all things as an epiphany or showing forth of the truth”. Campbell’s words resonate in my core. It was the beauty of science that inspired me to complete degrees in both biology and biomedical visualization at the University of Toronto and it has been the inspiration throughout my career. Art has the power to transport us back to a child-like state of wonder and curiosity, engaging us in an experience that transcends science. Creating art with this goal in mind seems to me a singularly worthy aspiration.

I try to offer the viewer a fresh approach to any given subject whenever possible. I want to communicate my sense of wonder at the complexity and beauty of science. My aesthetic sensibility helps me do that. It is my view that a biomedical image is truly successful when the viewer gains both new information and a new perspective on the knowledge they already possess.

The Japanese aesthetic concept of Shibui is also very powerful in my aesthetic decision-making, especially in my fine art, which I create in a style I called evocative abstraction. Shibui relates to the mystery and subtle suggested meanings that are contained within a work of art, and reveres the quiet contemplative aspects of artistic expression.

With regard to colour, as I said, I am a colourist. I absolutely live for colour, lol, and part of my biomedical art’s signature look is the result of how I use colour to communicate and to excite interest. I use colour for emphasis, to add drama, to differentiate/contrast, to set a mood and for the pure joyful love of colour. I am so lucky that so much of what biomedical artists are asked to visualize these days is on a cellular or molecular level. Unless the art needs to comply with a branded colour palette, this allows  a great deal of creative freedom. After all, what colour is a molecule?

Another important aesthetic consideration in my work has to do with my thinking regarding how a viewer sees a biomedical image at different distances. This is especially true for large images intended to be used as posters or as large format exhibits. First, an image must have a strong ‘poster effect’. By poster effect I mean a strong, striking, overall design that attracts a viewer’s initial attention, especially from a distance. This overall design must be appealing enough to draw a person in to take a closer look. The elements of that overall design can involve the use of shapes, composition, dramatic colour… Then, the viewer must be entranced by the beauty and complexity of the details and subtleties of a rendering. Those are the qualities that hold a viewer’s attention. Together, these qualities result in a viewer who is motivated to understand what is being shown.

Finally, one very personal part of the aesthetic value of my work derives from my never-ending desire to, whenever possible, present a scientific subject in a way it has never before been depicted, often by taking a very different/unique perspective or viewpoint. There again the goal is to capture the imagination and interest of the viewer. It’s always very exciting to hear the positive comments this gets from my clients and colleagues.

As for the general response to my work, my agent always tell me that people comment on either the beauty or uniqueness of my paintings. They often express surprise that even some pretty heavy medical subjects can still usually be translated into an image that is visually appealing. That’s the challenge!

I am humbled by some of the comments I get, especially when I often feel so very far from achieving what I envision. I guess that’s both the blessing and the curse of being an artist. It’s a never-ending, but joyful quest.

Very happy to share this cover art created by Audra Geras for the JCI!

Audra was commissioned by Dr. Tim Vartanian at Cornell to create this image showing how two epsilon toxin, ETX, producing strains of Clostridium perfringens, strains B and D, when found in the gut microbiome, appear to be implicated in demyelination damage of neurons in areas of the brain associated with multiple sclerosis. This important scientific research by Dr. Vartanian and his colleagues is impressive, exceptionally elegant work with the potential to lead to much-needed novel therapies for MS.

The lower left portion of the image shows both an ETX-producing strain (blue bacteria) in the mucus layer of the small intestine, as well as a non-toxin-producing strain (green bacteria). The ETX-producing bacteria are shown secreting ETX molecules that then enter the blood vessels in the intestinal villi. ETX is a pore-forming molecule. The formation of ETX pores in the endothelial cells of capillaries in the blood brain barrier (BBB) seen in the top right of the cover, damages the integrity of the barrier allowing the infiltration of myelin autoreactive CD4+ T lymphocytes into the brain parenchyma. These lymphocytes release inflammatory cytokines and cytokines that provide secondary signals to other cells in the immune cascade. This pathologic immune response leads ultimately to the destruction of the myelin insulation on neurons.

The challenges in creating this piece were both a crazy-short timeline, as well as the difficulty of depicting a story that takes place in multiple environments – the gut microbiome, the blood-brain-barrier and the brain parenchyma – all while staying aware of the title and copy placement on the cover.

Both Audra and Dr. Vartanian were very excited that this image was the final selection for use on the May, 2023 cover!