The surrealist artist René Magritte once painted an image of a pipe and under it wrote: Ceci n'est pas une pipe. His idea of regarding art as a representation of reality demonstrates the notion of relativity in artistic expression, that being: the significance of something is dependent on another thing. This idea of relativity was further and perhaps, more influentially manifested in science through Einstein's discoveries which led to a new way of looking at the world. The manner in which we look at the world, more specifically human existence, was fundamentally my inspiration in the creation of my art piece. The Theory of Relativity surely impacted my artistic expression, as mass impacts the shape of the universe. Alongside with Einstein's ideas, the thought experiment of Schrödinger's cat prompted me to contemplate the duality of my own existence through the notion of being both dead and alive at the same time.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity claimed that space is not absolute, rather space and time are relative. For this reason, I chose to do an oil painting. Oil paint requires the most time to dry and even once I was done, it was not absolutely finished since it was still wet. Therefore, the process of completion went far beyond just painting the image. Since it takes so long to dry, when I was painting, my success in adding colour onto the previously painted sections was relative to the amount of the paint I was adding. Everything I wanted to do was further impacted by what I did before and instead of working against it, I had to conform to it. I began by painting myself with a pigmentation that is similar to my own; the shadows were, however, much browner in color than those that appear naturally. I decided to incorporate some coral hues to add some vibrancy to my face and to make it appear alive and healthy. When looking at the face and the body dead on, they are solid. However, when one shifts perspective to the side they notice that both the face and the body are dispersing into the contrasting background. The background is a representation of the universe and my skin is taking form of the universe which is curved. The transition from solidity into fluidity represents my interconnectedness with the universe; more specifically, the link between my existence and the universe in which I live. Secondly, it represents being taken into the void. My intent was to keep the universe as being opaque with no details besides the differentiating colors. The idea of nothingness beyond our universe is an idea I find very intriguing and for this reason, I kept my representation of the universe as just colors and nothing more.

The manner in which I represented the diminishing of my existence was through the use of waves. The waves were formed through the disintegration of my skin and my skin was the lightest color present in the painting. This is symbolic to the wave nature of light and how both the light and my life are represented as being taken into the darkness. The skin as its get further away from the actual sources decreases in size and appears to be more like a particle than a wave, representing the wave-particle duality of light. Schrödinger's equation allowed for the incorporation of both the wave and the particle nature of matter which is one of the ideas that I incorporated from him. Secondly, Schrödinger's cat is the idea in which my whole piece was founded on. The idea of uncertainty is an idea that is associated with the Post-Classical scientific era. I wanted to explore this idea through the contemplation of my own existence. The art piece, like my life, is tangible and in painting I was in control of how I viewed my own existence. Magritte used the notion of representation, an idea that I drew up. I painted an image of myself therefore it is not me but merely a representation of me. However, what does it mean to be me... to be alive? What does it mean to exist when there is a possibility of a dual universe. The duality of my existence was represented through my heart. A functional human heart is what differentiates someone who is dead from one who is alive. In the painting I am holding my heart and although it is removed from my chest, it is still connected to my body through veins representing being dead and alive at the same time. I am dead because my heart is exterior to my body and I am alive because it is still connected and functioning.

I was attracted to the idea of the uncertainty of my fate in creating my piece. I chose to do an abstract representation of Quantum Reality by demonstrating two parallel universes in one. The world is composed of potentials and actualities and I wanted to use a representation of myself to show this. The Classical scientific views of certainty were represented in the solidity of my face, while the uncertainty present in the modern era is shown through my skin going off into the unknown. The certainty represents but a small portion of the painting since the prominent belief now is that there is no absolute truth. The painting was meant to look uncertain since reality, along with understanding, is subjective.