Paul Seli

BIO

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I am a self-taught artist who hails from Pickering, Ontario, Canada, and I am currently living in Durham, North Carolina, working at Duke University as a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience. In my career as a cognitive psychologist, I endeavor to unravel the mysteries of the human mind through empirical inquiry and share the insights I glean through rigorous scientific articles that systematically deconstruct the inner workings of the mind. My research focuses on topics like consciousness, mind wandering, memory, attention, creativity, and psychedelics—put simply, how we think about and experience the world, and how the Mind at Large shapes our lives. The focus of my art is much the same, but the methods are distinct. Painting provides me an outlet for more unfettered forays into what it means to be human. My disposition for scientific rigor falls to the wayside and gives way to free-flowing, child-like, and associative immersion in the substance of the disparate elements that comprise the spectrum of the human experience, from the mundane to the joyous to the dark. My art enables me to share the conscious and unconscious perspectives I’ve acquired through my scientific pursuit to understand the mind, and through my quest as an individual to explore and experience life to its fullest.