Awakening — Artwork from the Vortices series
Painting acquired by:
The ACTION Institute
University of California, Santa Barbara
Created by:
Melissa Mahoney
Palo Alto, California
Awakening | 18-feet by 10-feet | Acrylic on canvas
The Story Behind the ACTION Acquisition
The ACTION Institute, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s AI Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation, is based at UC Santa Barbara. It is working to change how mission-critical systems are defended against sophisticated, ever-evolving security threats.
It’s also now home to Awakening, an 18' × 10' original painting by Melissa Mahoney.
The acquisition began with a friendship. Melissa and Giovanni Vigna, ACTION’s director and a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at UCSB, have known each other for years. Giovanni has long encouraged Melissa and her large-scale work.
When the opportunity arose to bring original art into the Institute’s space, Giovanni reached out and selected Awakening. “Research at this level demands a certain expansiveness of thought, and I wanted the environment to reflect that,” Giovanni says. “A painting built around energy, motion, and transformation, one that rewards a second and third look, felt like the right kind of artwork for people doing work that requires seeing threats differently than everyone else does.”
Awakening now greets researchers, students, and visitors at ACTION. It’s a daily reminder that discovery, whether on canvas or in code, starts with the willingness to see something differently.
Learn more about the ACTION Institute
About the Painting
Awakening is the largest painting Melissa Mahoney has created to date. At 18 feet by 10 feet, it covered nearly the entire floor of her studio.
To work at this scale, Melissa commissioned a brush maker to build her a brush 48 inches long. After laying in a background of neutrals, light slate blue, and olive, she loaded the oversized brush with carbon black paint and began striking the canvas in bold, circular shapes. The composition was already fixed in her mind, but it was the scale of the brush, and the physicality it demanded, that brought the painting to life.
“Painting at this size confirmed what I thought would be the case,” Melissa says. “I really love painting at a large scale and how emotive that is.”
About the Artist
Melissa Mahoney (U.S., b. 1965) is an abstract painter known for dynamic, circular brushstrokes. Trained in calligraphy in Cortona, Italy, she builds her circles, a body of work she calls Vortices, from multiple brushstrokes inspired by the Japanese ensō, seeking balance and dynamic tension at once. Her work is held by collectors worldwide, including a piece chosen by the U.S. State Department for the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Papua New Guinea, and she has led painting workshops at TED2020. She lives and works in Palo Alto, California.
Read more about the artist
