UR biologist uses art to teach environmental lessons

December 2, 2024

RESEARCH & INNOVATION

Professor’s paintings create connections to drive greater responsibility and respect for the planet.

Eugene Maurakis has always had a passion for the natural world.

As a biologist, he spent decades studying the impacts of human activity on marine ecosystems, from the contamination of fish in Greece to the growing problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. Maurakis, a research scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Richmond since 1998, found that the public didn’t always pay attention to science news.

After his father died, Maurakis found a therapeutic outlet in painting, a side passion he’d discovered in junior high school. He realized his art could raise greater awareness about the environment.

“The general public doesn’t read scientific publications,” he said. “I use art to inspire people to consider changing their behaviors and how they treat the natural world.”

A 21-piece series and short award-winning film come together in “Seascapes of the 21st Century." The exhibition of his art work runs through May at the Science Museum of Virginia, where Maurakis served as chief scientist for 25 years until 2019.

The works — mostly oil paintings — are comprised of vibrant colors and dynamic compositions. A closer look reveals serious messages of the devastating effects of human-caused environmental degradation, from plastic-filled oceans to toxic algal blooms.

His works visualize how those impacts start when algae and carcinogens attach to microplastics. Fish get lured by the aroma, then eat the algae. Next up the food chain, humans consume their dinner with unknown servings of microplastics. As he calls out in the exhibition notes, the adverse effects of those tiny fragments on human health are just beginning to be studied, but initial findings show damaging impacts on human DNA and proteins.

I use art to inspire people to consider changing their behaviors and how they treat the natural world.

Eugene Maurakis

Research Scientist and Adjunct Professor

Other works with polychromatic swirls of blues and reds explore how warmer oceans encourage dangerous algal blooms as a result of climate change. In some cases, as the blooms die, the remaining oxygen-depleted zones cause the loss of marine life. Other blooms create toxins – up to 1,000 times more potent than cyanide – that cause foodborne illnesses in humans. Those paintings reimagine beautiful but telling images from NASA and other government satellite sites. Each stroke on the canvas represents billions of harmful microorganisms.

“I want people to look at these paintings and feel something," he said. “I want them to be drawn in by the beauty, and then have that beauty shaken by the realization of what we're doing to the natural world.”

In 2017, Maurakis developed and taught “Interpreting Science through the Arts and Humanities” at Richmond, bringing his passion into the classroom. His students applied their course and lecture experiences – which featured prominent scholars, scientists and artists on topics such as climate change and shoreline erosion – to a final project that addressed and communicated an environmental issue through an artistic avenue. The resulting works included sculptures, a comic book and a children’s book, with many previously on display at the Gottwald Science Center.

With “Seascapes of the 21st Century,” Maurakis hopes visitors walk away with a renewed responsibility for the world around them.

“I want people to think about their daily lives and realize that we don’t own the world,” he said. “We need to stop what we’re doing to the Earth, the air, the water, the very things that sustain us. We should always respect and protect the natural world."