Kulsoom Kamil Khan

Contest entry

My painting explores anomalous diffusion by capturing the interaction of watercolor with different mediums: salt, baking soda, oil, and lotion. Drops of black watercolor paint were made to run freely over the surface of the canvas interspersed with various substances that created unique and irregular patterns. The paint ran faster in some places, then slower, reacting in unpredictable ways in a heterogeneous environment. The baking soda created granular texture, the salt crystals resulted in fractal-like patterns, oil repelled the water paint creating distinct boundaries, and the lotion dollops depending on their size, either resulted in swirling patterns or acted as blocks for the paint to run around. Biases towards a certain path that the paint took were also noted, with specific areas of the canvas being darker than the rest, sometimes having no paint running through. This interplay of mediums with paint exhibits how different particle systems influence the movement of fluids, highlighting the complexity of anomalous diffusion and its departure from the standard Brownian motion. Thus, the emergent structures in this piece reinforce how environmental factors can disrupt standard diffusion, affecting the spread of substances and resulting in unexpected, unique and beautiful structures of distinct complexity.

Artist biography

I studied a STEM field and am continuing to work in a STEM field, and have always been fascinated by the interplay of art and nature, and our ability as human beings to study it via means of mathematics and technology. My current interests lies in finding means to bring people from different backgrounds together, and this competition has truly been one environment where I can see the crossroads of individualism being brought together to contribute to a collectivistic cause.