Artist Statement

This series is an observation on the contrast between religion and science. This theme and idea were partly inspired by my past art history and theology classes and partly by Hilma af Klint’s work with geometry and spirituality. I’ve always loved the religious art of the Renaissance and how they were painted during a time of great education and innovation. As masters painted religion, engineers and scientists began the start of the Scientific Revolution. I find this contrast very interesting and wanted to incorporate it into my art. The paintings consist of two traditional acrylic paintings and six digital paintings. I appreciate both forms and how they feed the contrast of religion vs. science with painting on canvas feeling more spiritual and painting digitally feeling more modern and requiring computer knowledge. As I painted more pieces, I began including the gods/goddesses in environments that reflected both what they were worshipped for and how those things look in modern day life. There’s a detachment between the spiritual and science today and that detachment, some philosophers say, is the cause of people and cultures treating the environment so terribly. I tried to depict this in my most recent pieces with the contrast between modern technologies and the “old ways” of pagan and polytheistic religions.

Lia O’Riordan

About the Artist

Lia O’Riordan is an Irish painter and digital artist currently attending Loyola University Maryland. Her work presents surrealism and baroque styling, melding and interacting with science and spirituality. Religion and science pose an interesting, conversation-starting contrast that presents questions about the future of humanity, technology killing the old “happy and simple” ways of living, and care for the environment around us. In the past she has focused on the uncomfortable aspects of religion with abstraction, but her current project is contrasting religion and science in a more positive or neutral lighting. She addresses her own experiences with both science and religion, but also tries to incorporate the experiences of others through conversation and research. Growing up Catholic and around the pagan influences of Ireland and Russia, she always found spirituality enticing. Lia also found the contrast of spirituality and science interesting, especially from country to country; For example, a country like Ireland, a land of mostly farms and untouched wildlife right outside cities, versus a country like the US or Russia, where around cities there is little “natural world” left. The destruction of the environment for the advancement of technology and society is an age-old question that environmental philosophers and theologians, who consider the environment sacred, ponder and she incorporates that question into her paintings.