Art, Intuition, and Identity in Ramón y Cajal

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Images script:

1. Hunter D, DeFelipe J, Mehta AR, Conway BR. Art, Intuition, and Identity in Ramón y Cajal. The Neuroscientist. 2024;0(0). doi:10.1177/10738584241234049

1. Dawn Hunter, portrait of Cajal in Pyramidal Neurons, marker, pen and ink on paper, 5.5” x 13.”

2. Dawn Hunter, Drawing of Cajal’s Black and White self-portrait, marker and pen on paper, 11” x 14.”

3. Dawn Hunter. Observational drawing/recreation of Ramón y Cajal’s drawing of the retina, ink and pen on paper, 11″ x 14.»

4. Dawn Hunter, Drawing of Cajal’s Purkinje Cell drawing, marker and pen on paper, 11: x 14.”

5. Dawn Hunter, Two Cajals in the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, pen, ink and acrylic on paper, 11″ x 14.» (This work was created by casting shadows from the original mold of Cajal’s death mask and then juxtaposing it with a Plein air drawing of the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid).

6. Dawn Hunter, Re-creation of inside back cover of Cajal’s first sketchbook from Valencia, marker and pen on paper, 11″ x 14″, 2017.

7. Dawn Hunter, Silveria Fañanás

7. Portrait of Artist Dawn Hunter. Short Biography:

For the past several years, Dawn Hunter has been developing a creative project about the life of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience. She immerses Cajal in «neuron narratives,» connecting him to seminal influences from his youth that led to his perception of the neuron as an individual unit. Her artwork about Cajal has garnered recognition in the neuroscience community. She has been awarded fellowships and grants supporting this series, most notably a Fulbright España Senior Research Scholar Fellowship through the Fulbright Foundation, Washington, DC. She has exhibited this series in many exhibitions at leading medical research institutions like the National Institutes of Health, USA, and the Instituto Cajal, Madrid, Spain. She has participated in collaborative symposiums held in honor of Cajal that the NIH and the Instituto Cajal facilitated. While a Fulbright Scholar at the Instituto Cajal, she was invited to give a presentation about her research at the 17th National Congress of the Spanish Society of Neuroscience, Alicante, Spain. She has written articles about her perceptions of Cajal’s drawings for the National Library of Medicine’s Circulating Now and the Sage journal, The Neuroscientist. Articles about her research have been featured in professional magazines in the field, like, The Scientist and Scientific American. In 2021, Dawn’s artistic works about Cajal was featured in a solo exhibition at the College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, and in 2022 she was elected to the Cajal Club’s Board of Directors.

Dawn Hunter received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from the University of California, Davis, where she studied with Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest, and Irit Rogoff. Dawn has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. She has received many awards and grants for her artwork, markedly a Starr Foundation Fellowship to the Royal Academy of Art, London. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.

Link to Website: www.dawnhunterart.com