In medical school, when people started asking me how long I had been painting, I realized I did not have an answer to that question. Do you know when you started walking or holding your head upright? It is just something that has been happening. I have chaotically carried sketchbooks to class from grade school onwards. I had an English teacher in high school who just told me to keep the sketching on theme, so I drew him a raven when we read Edgar Allan Poe. My purse has at least 15 pens and a Sharpie in it at all times.
Artists have the gift of expressing the ideas they see in their minds, and I loved that I could always put my spin on the things I observed. My love for plants and nature was shared by my favorite science teacher to date, who showed me all kinds of microscopic views of plants, microorganisms, algae, and yeast. I started painting images of my own succulents and garden, combined with different light and electron microscope views of plants. My high school still has a tardigrade and a yeast painting hanging where I used to spend hours looking at slides. In college, this pivoted to anatomy and neuroanatomy, which really took off in the preclinical years of medical school when the anatomy department let me hang out and draw or paint anything I asked. By the clinical years, my inspiration was the hospital and the patients there.
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Art has been how I expressed what I love. It has been an easy way to show people the beauty I see in science that is not quite clear in environments like a cadaver lab. I can bring attention to the patterns, shapes, and colors that are worth admiring, even if it’s not as traditionally beautiful as a landscape. I recently realized this has some value in a clinical picture. I asked patients for their permission to illustrate some part of their clinical history purely because it was something I had an artistic vision for. In my own excitement, I always made sure to show the patients my paintings, and I noticed that there was a greater connection in what they understand or want to know about in their clinical picture.
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There were suddenly more questions about their condition that were definitely discussed at some point, but did not resonate enough to stick with them. There is a powerful use for art and illustration in medicine. I used to believe this applied simply to the perspective of public interest in engaging with science, but it may also have utility in disease and diagnosis. Patients do not choose stroke, degenerative conditions, pain, or genetic conditions. In a clear generalization, medicine at best has neutral or disinterested connotations, ranging to fear or mistrust. I believe art is a language we all understand, whether or not we have an interest in it, so putting medicine into a visual format can “speak” to people in a way that words maybe cannot.
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Medicine and art exist in our minds like oil and water. Diametrically opposed, it’s frequently and inappropriately assumed one is more important than the other. Science and medicine are needed to survive, advance, and help people live their lives. To me, art is what makes those lives worth living. I believe there is a therapeutic value to expressing medicine through a visual, artistic form of communication. I use art to communicate what I think words and photographs cannot. The lens of each artist speaks to more than what the objective image is. I think a common example of this is Frank Netter’s medical illustrations. What those diagrams capture is factually correct, but the presentation is completely different than gross anatomy. I do not believe my art is strictly medical illustration, because it has always been more stylized. It is science and medicine with character. I have a brain lamp that I sculpted, embroidered, and wired by hand. I painted a thigh and knee to look like copper with patina and white draped robes instead of the blue wet rags in the anatomy lab and beige cadaver. I have stacks of watercolor, gouache, and pen art pieces of patterns in vasculature, sulci and gyri, musculature, and hopefully soon, stories I will get to paint.
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When I meet somebody new, they usually ask me not to ever stop painting, or that I should be a professional artist. But to me, art could never be a career because that would mean painting what somebody else sees or altering what I want to express. I have taken commissions for doctors, scientists, and academically minded individuals, and the commonality is always that I paint my vision without any alterations. I have always painted for myself. It’s an added benefit when somebody else sees something in it, but not the goal.
There is a powerful use for art and illustration in medicine. I used to believe this applied simply to the perspective of public interest in engaging with science, but it may also have utility in disease and diagnosis.
