12/24/25 Newsletter - Chasing the Light (6/6)

Max Flores
Dec 25, 2025
2 min read

In our quest to make paintings about the way light affects perception, we have discussed light microscopy, illumination techniques, specimens and photomicrography. This week, I'll share with you a painting of Stylaria lacustris and a few art updates.

The Painting

Here are the two paintings I made of Stylaria lacustris as seen in brightfield and darkfield illumination.

I really enjoyed learning more about it.

There are many interesting papers about this organism out there, such as this one: Sublethal predation on Stylaria lacustris: a study of regenerative capabilities. I plan to compile some information about it in a future blog post.

Chasing the Light

What about the gallery show that inspired this newsletter? I ended up not submitting any paintings to it, I submitted photomicrographs instead. Two out of my three entries have been accepted: Trillium Stem and Salt Crystals.

Current Exhibitions

I currently have paintings at:

Heartland Art Club, artwork: Afternoon in Rio Grande do Sul, until January 24th
Artisans in the Loop, artwork: Swimming Beaver, until January 21st

And photomicrographs at:

Soulard Art Gallery, artworks: Salt Crystals and Trillium Stem, until January 16th
The Red Gate Gallery, artwork: Essence of a Tree, until April 12th (Show starts on January 16th)

If you can, please come check those out!!

What's Next?

The 6 parts of this newsletter series are listed below:

There will be no newsletters from December 25th to January 15th as I will be taking a Holiday break. The topic of the following newsletters will be: Bioluminescence.

Thank You!

Thank you to all of those who have been reading this newsletter for the past 6 weeks! I will keep working to improve it as time goes on. Wishing all of you happy holidays!

If you have any questions, send an e-mail to contact@maxflores.art.

See you next year!