This painting originated in the Epidemiology Department here at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine! I met with a number of researchers in various departments, but Dr. Rebecca Christofferson’s lab offered me a very cool substrate that I wanted to use: mosquito ovipositioning paper! This paper, as its name suggests, is used by researchers to hatch mosquito eggs for research purposes. It’s an interestingly textured paper, and it has aqua lines on it in two configurations; on each 15x10” piece of paper, there are either two vertical lines 1” and 1.25” inside the border, or there is one line 4” inside (or 6”, depending on your perspective).

I asked what purpose the lines serve (they clearly serve some purpose, whether that be for researchers or as an artifact of the production process), and no one at LSU SVM has been able to tell me. I think that’s pretty funny, as it was my first question and the first question out of several of my artist friends’ mouths as well! Dr. Christofferson did just follow up with me to share the mosquito ovipositioning paper is apparently a repurposed seed germination paper, so I will try to follow that thread to see if I can figure out why the aqua lines exist!

As I shared in a previous journal, I took the photos of these mosquitoes myself. This composition includes two female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, both after a bovine blood meal, and three mosquito eggs to scale with the mosquito depictions. I purposefully integrated cool tones and aqua shadows to tie in the aqua margin lines.

This is Hosts, acrylic on mosquito ovipositioning paper, 15x10”, 2022. It will be window-matted with an overlay of mosquito netting from the epidemiology lab on top of the matboard and framed. I’ll be assembling the frame with the help of my host Rob Carpenter, so I’m excited to see how it all comes together!