Neil Banas is a visual artist based at Wasps’ Briggait studios, and a marine scientist based in the Mathematics and Statistics department of Strathclyde University in Glasgow. His formal training is in physics, oceanography, and comparative religion, and prior to coming to Glasgow in 2014, he taught environmental humanities and researched coastal ocean dynamics at University of Washington in Seattle. His work in both art and science explores natural worlds at the margins of our vision and attention: microscopic plankton, the ocean-spanning migrations of salmon and seabirds, radiant sea slugs, and the nutrient-energy cycles they all participate in.

Since 2006 he has used computational methods to create intricate images via dynamic processes that borrow from weather and ocean models, biomechanics, and Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings. In 2021 Neil took up origami design, playing with scale and animal forms at the border between realism and science fiction. His approach is inspired by the loving attention that the Japanese–Western origami tradition has long paid to beetles, cicadas, and other invertebrates, and the parallel, geometric origami tradition of decorative boxes and household crafts—as well as classic museum-craft such as the botanical collages of Mary Delany and the glass invertebrates of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. More information and instructional diagrams can be found at origamiplankton.org.

In 2024 Neil co-founded the Waterways Collective (waterwayscollective.org), a Scotland-based group of artists and scientists that came together to follow wild Atlantic salmon and their migrations into local landscapes, distant seascapes, multi-species histories, and possible futures. The group initiated an annual cycle of field research, collaborative writing and art-making, and public performance with a journey along the River Spey in May 2024.