According to the Fairfax Digital, Australian scientist who says he found proof of bacterial life on Mars has turned his talents to the art world.

Tony Taylor, a biophysicist from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, has devised a new painting technique.

He calls it morphed entropy, and the works it produces are otherworldly landscapes and psychedelic abstracts filled with rainbow swirls and intricate shapes. Over 20 years, he has honed the mechanical technique so it can simultaneously produce abstract patterns and realistic images.

"Morph is form and entropy is the natural tendency in the universe towards chaos," Taylor says. "In these works, you're looking at pure chaos, but it's also got recognisable forms."

He is brimming with excitement about the technique and about his coming exhibition, Nature: Chaos And Order Inexorably Entwined, but refuses to say how his invention works. The paints and equipment are under lock and key in his studio and disguised as household objects in his Bundeena home. He meets every supposition about the technique with a gleeful: "No, that's not how it works."

He does not use a computer; he does not dip the canvases in dye; and he does not slap together two paint-covered panes of glass - though he once detailed that technique in a bogus patent to distract anyone looking to steal the idea.

A seasoned inventor, Taylor says the secrecy is vital to his discovery's success. "Even if I had enough money to patent it, I would then have to find an awful lot of money to defend the patent and to detect people breaching it. The process of coming up with a patent just gives everyone who's going to rob you a blueprint as to how to do it."

He began work on the technique in 1987 after becoming disillusioned with his career as an immunologist. However, he soon realised the life of a struggling artist was even tougher than that of a struggling scientist and returned to university to complete a PhD.

Through his PhD research, Taylor helped develop technology that reportedly proved microscopic bacteria once lived on Mars. In 2006 he won the prize for best invention on the ABC's program The New Inventors for an eating, breathing membrane that cleaned wastewater.

Last year he finally found time to refine his morphed entropy painting process. It can take 24 hours to complete a painting and, despite his knowledge of physics and chemistry, there is endless potential for disaster.

"If you misjudge the surface tension or make the colours too oily, you'll just get a mess," he says.

Through meticulous calculations and a number of late-night eureka moments, Taylor has found solutions for most of the problems. "These days I can play with the viscosity, the emulsion and the surface tension to control the painting. I can do anything from tiny little shapes to a perfectly smooth surface that looks like it's been airbrushed," he says.