((Left) Cahuilla Hills (Right) Ross Mercer)
Abstract painter Ross Mercer likes his paintings to have a story. From his background in physics and math, he hides equations or scientific images in his colorful works. If you are viewing one of his paintings, it may just seem like an abstract work with a somber background punctuated by a bright rectangle in hot colors like red, orange, and yellow, but Mercer wants to relate a scientific message to you. “When I look at paintings, I see things in them and there’s a story there,” he explains. Having s story behind a painting makes it more meaningful to him and to the viewer. Mercer’s work is showcased at Red Chair Gallery in May.
After attaining two MS degrees in physics, Mercer worked for universities doing research and training students to use nuclear reactor instruments. In 1975, he founded two companies in Portland that focused on radiation. His wife Vicki soon joined him and together they operated them for more than 35 years. One analyzed the effects of radiation exposure on humans and the impact on their health. The other analyzed the quality of medical imaging in hospitals for x-rays, CT scans, mammography and nuclear medicine. “Any business that involved radiation, we did it,” says Mercer. Since retiring in 2012, the Mercers split their time between Portland and Sunriver, where their family vacationed for many years.
Mercer had always dabbled in art, taking sketchbooks on vacation and drawing copiously. Friends who were artists encouraged him to do more and he took a two-term art course at Portland Community College. Later, he painted with watercolors on paper, drawing inspiration from Abstract Expressionist artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell. Again, his artist friends urged him to evolve. They told him to “go beyond the lines or go big,” he recalled. He took the advice, switching to large canvases and acrylic paint. And he began to incorporate his background in physics and math into his work.
A painting titled Planck’s Problem illustrates Mercer’s approach to art. It is based on the Nobel Prize-winning physicist’s attempt to explain the relationship between the energy going into a heated piece of metal and the frequency or color of the radiation emitted. As the metal heats slowly, it becomes red. “Energy is going into the metal and energy is emitted, in the form of infrared radiation (heat) and visible radiation,” Mercer explains. As the temperature of the heat increases, the metal changes color to yellow, then orange and finally white. At that point, it is what we call white hot. Planck’s work on such problems created the basis for quantum mechanics; later, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity “became the twin pillars of modern physics,” he notes.
Mercer’s rendition of Planck’s Problem has a somber background punctuated by a neon orange rectangle. “The painting needed a bright color, one of the obvious emissions as the metal warmed, and I chose orange,” Mercer says. The dark colors surrounding it “represent not the ignorance but the limitations of classical physics,” he adds.
Mercer is also known to sneak equations into a painting. The equation must be short and say something profound,” he notes, such as the famous Einstein equation of relativity: E=mc2, which calculates the energy equivalent of a given mass. A viewer who doesn’t know this “needs to decide if the information is integral to the painting or just gestural marks,” he says. But Mercer would be happy to give the viewer an erudite explanation of the painting that will give it real significance.
In addition to Red Chair Gallery, Mercer also shows his work at Portland’s Robin Becic Gallery.