Alexander Kobulnicky

Chlorophyll
30” x 40”
Acrylic on canvas
2010
$1500

Chlorophyll, as much as any organic molecule, may be said to be the foundation of life as we know it. Found in plants, algae and some bacteria, chlorophyll absorbs photons from the sun, transferring the energy to an associated photosystem, where it excites electrons that travel through an electron transport chain to reduce the coenzyme NADP+ to NADPH. Meanwhile, the electrons are replaced in the transport chain by oxidizing water, forming molecular oxygen as a byproduct. The NADPH is then used in the Calvin cycle to convert carbon dioxide into usable carbohydrates.

In this way, chlorophyll allows plants to derive all of their necessary energy from the sun, using it to construct their carbohydrate cell walls, to drive their cellular processes, and to throw off copious amounts of molecular oxygen. It is these carbohydrates, and this oxygen that allow heterotrophs like animals and humans to live the lifestyle we do, eating plants and breathing their oxygen.

Chlorophyll is associated so closely with plants and natural processes that its cheerful green color has become a shorthand for nature itself, with Green movements in the industrialized world advocating for environmentalism, and even the word “green” coming from the Old English “to grow”.

Chlorophyll’s greenness is a function of its structure, with the magnesium ion held as a ligand in the porphyrin in the center and the long hydrocarbon tail causing it to absorb red light and blue light, and to reflect most wavelengths of green light. This color can be altered — when green vegetables are overcooked, their chlorophyll breaks down at the ester between the porphyrin and the hydrocarbon tail, and consequently becomes the sickly chartreuse we associate with mushy broccoli.

The chlorophyll depicted here is chlorophyll A, the most common form in terrestrial plants, with other forms of chlorophyll being minor variations on the basic structure.

These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible. The atoms are color-coded, with carbon being black, hydrogen white, oxygen red, nitrogen blue, and magnesium silvery-white. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas