Tropos references the water cycle and the troposphere in order to draw attention to the current global concerns about the environment. The painting was originally shown at the UNB Art Centre during the 80th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at the University of New Brunswick in 2011. Originally conceived as a multi-media installation, it was designed as an exploration of the viewer’s experience as part of Musgrave’s Master of Interdisciplinary Studies research. Musgrave’s painting focuses on colour, motion and visualized sound and integrates optical effects and luminous sequences to create a fluctuating, ebbing and flowing experience. The work found a permanent home in 2019 located on the 3rd floor link between the Currie Center and the Kinesiology Building of the University of New Brunswick.

Tropos (2011/19) Acrylic on Canvas, 8’ by 48’

Tropos, mixing, from trepein, to turn, similar to trope, a way, a manner, a figure of speech, an embellishment in the sung parts of certain medieval liturgies, part of trophic, nutritive processes, from trophikos, nursing, and trophe, food, in aid of the tropoderm, the outermost layer of the cells of the morula that attaches the fertilized ovum to the uterine wall and acts as a nutritive pathway, creating a trophy, a prize or memento received as a symbol of victory, as is the troposphere, the lowest region of the atmosphere characterized by decreasing temperature with increasing altitude, where the phenomena of weather occurs, 99% water vapor and aerosols