The world is warming and migratory flight patterns are changing. Scientists at central Pennsylvania’s Hawk Mountain Sanctuary recently concluded a 15-year study on the critical relationship between these two facts—and an artist is among the first to present these findings to the public.

The most recent series of paintings from PennDesign fine arts lecturer Deirdre Murphy comes out of these findings, as well as research she conducted in her role as Hawk Mountain’s current artist-in-residence. The exhibition of her work, “Winds of Change,” opens Friday, Nov. 6 with a reception from 5-7 p.m. at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia. It will run through Nov. 28.

Murphy has studied birds for years, and the work in the exhibition reflects a scientific approach to art-making.

At the outset, Murphy says the birds were simply a vehicle for the narrative. She visited The Academy of Natural Sciences and the Philadelphia Zoo to research their anatomy, wanting to make sure her depictions of them on paper and canvas were correct.

“The more I worked with the bird theme, the less it came to be about the singular bird and the more it came to be about murmurations and the spectacle of flocking,” she says. “I had to understand more about the behavior of birds, and that’s where my scientific research got a lot deeper.”

Murphy’s new exhibition reflects her research into migratory flight paths, collective consciousness, and why birds flock the way they do, a question she found particularly fascinating: “When you see 10,000 birds in the air,” she says, “when they shift and pulse, who decides to be the leader?”

Her research quickly led her to learn that these migratory flight patterns are changing significantly as a result of global warming.

“Looking at the global warming issue for me is about seeing a world in flux,” she says. “I realized birds are so complex, so intelligent and, yes, global warming is bad, but the birds are adapting and patterns are changing and I just want to note that.”

To better understand these shifts, Murphy turned to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary experts during her August residence: Jean-Francois Therrien, senior research biologist, and David Barber, the research biologist responsible for the Sanctuary’s GIS mapping projects along the Atlantic Flyway, the migratory route used by more than 500 bird species and millions of individual birds each year. They shared their raw data and generated graphs, which formed the basic design elements for Murphy’s paintings.

“They were so generous with their information,” Murphy says. “I got to use their data even before it appeared in the scientific journals. I was so honored.”

One of Murphy’s paintings, “Spring Jewel,” uses the Atlantic Flyway map as a primary design element.

“You’ll see all these bright little polka dots that go up and that’s South America,” she describes. “Then it pinches in by Cape May, and there’s a green band in to Philly, and then it goes up to Canada. It’s this beautiful hourglass shape, and they’re still seeing that shape, but the departure and arrival times are changing now because of global warming.”

Murphy says science has informed her approach to and practice of art since the beginning.

“My dad is an hematologist-oncologist,” she explains, “so I kind of grew up in a lab and around images of sickle-cell anemia and other beautiful molecular structures, so that idea of the abstract, visually, was always part of me, and that kind of research has always been in the back end of my painting.”

Murphy says grounding her art in science and drawing on the knowledge of peers from other disciplines not only deepens the art-making experience, but also broadens the audience for her work.

This dovetails with the mission of the Sanctuary, as well.

“Artistry that results from visits to the Sanctuary is wonderful,” says Keith Bildstein, the Sanctuary’s director of conservation science, “particularly in Deidre’s case when it involves the use of our long-term data sets. I’m sure that her artwork strikes people from different backgrounds differently, which is expected of art, but what strikes me most is her ability to capture the spirit that is Hawk Mountain and then overlay, in an abstract way, the long-term data sets we’re producing here to help us monitor populations in northeastern North American birds of prey.”

Murphy’s month-long exhibition at Gross McCleaf Gallery is one of three sites in the city where her work will be on view. Her exhibition, “Migratory Paths”—works on paper which she made as studies for her “Winds of Change” paintings—will be at the Naval Yard’s Urban Outfitters Design Headquarters from Nov. 3 through Dec. 5, and her multi-panel mural, “Sky Paintings,” continues to be on view at the Philadelphia International Airport, between Terminals C and D, until 2016.

All together, the exhibitions offer a retrospective on the last five years of Murphy’s art and a unique opportunity for viewers to see the meanings that take shape when important scientific data guides the broad strokes of an artist’s brush.