I have always been a scientist. It’s not just what I do but who I am. It colors every aspect of my life, affects my worldview. Several years ago I decided I wanted to learn to paint in oils. A dear friend and talented artist took me on as a student. He taught me about color and light and contrast and texture. He gave me a limited pallet and made me mix my colors from very basic ones. This experience was a revelation. When I had looked at a tree as a scientist I had known its ancestry and evolution. I understood its structure, how the xylem and phloem carried its nourishment within it. I saw its leaf structure and knew about its stoma exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen and how the auxins directed its apical meristems to heaven or earth. I still knew all those things and saw them in the living thing before me. But now I had new eyes, artist’s eyes that understood the leaf was yellow and blue, knew that without red in the proper quantities I would never make the bark seem real. I saw texture and shadow and dancing highlights. The artist and the scientist both saw the tree, and both sets of eyes, each in their own way, saw a thing of beauty.