“The brain does not speak in words—it fires, it leaps. It dances in silence across synaptic gaps.”
— (inspired by David Eagleman and Santiago Ramón y Cajal)

Artist Statement

Neuronal Skipping is an embodied metaphor for the fragile elegance of neurophysiological movement. The figure, suspended mid-skip over a reflective pond, embodies the saltatory conduction of nerve impulses—those rapid, leap-like signals that dart along myelinated axons. Each contact with the water’s surface mirrors the Nodes of Ranvier, the critical gaps where energy jumps to propel thought into motion.

Rendered in angular, prismatic geometry, the figure exists in tension between buoyancy and sinking, between grace and collapse. The surrounding landscape fractures into crystalline planes, suggesting both natural terrain and neural pathways under strain. Trees echo dendritic branches; the looming sun mirrors a neuron’s nucleus; the pond becomes the axon itself—its ripples tracing the erratic dance of a signal fighting to hold its rhythm.

This is not a diagram but a lament and a lyric. It captures the body’s silent choreography when it works and the hollow stillness when it fails. Here, the scientific is poetic: the myelin sheath is the unbroken water’s surface; the skipped stone is the impulse itself, beautiful only so long as it doesn’t drown.

Addendum: Stylistic Lineages—From Cubist Fractures to Neural Topographies

Cubism
Faceted planes deconstruct the figure and terrain, mirroring the fragmented pulse of misfiring neurons.

Futurism
Trajectory lines and avian "synapses" evoke velocity, echoing Futurism’s worship of kinetic energy.

Constructivism
The body as engineered system, rendered with geometric precision.

Surrealism
The dreamlike skip—an impossible act—parallels Surrealism’s obsession with bodily metaphor.

Biosemiotic Art
The pond as axon, the sun as soma, the skip as saltatory conduction: a visual lexicon of neuro-poetics.

Digital Neo-Expressionism
Sharp vectors and restrained color wielded to carve emotional depth from formal restraint.

Interpretive Note

This image is an elegy for the body’s unseen labor. The nervous system’s language is one of leaps and landings—a rhythm so fluent we forget it’s there until the stumble. Neuronal Skipping is that stumble made visible: the moment a thought falters mid-flight, the split second before the water swallows the stone.