I am a physician based in NYC. Until December of 2022, I had a solo pediatric practice in lower Manhattan servicing the most vulnerable of children; those who are Medicaid recipients, non English speaking, impoverished, etc. But like many physicians, due to the covid pandemic and the dysfunction of the healthcare field, I was burned out... to a crisp. So I sold my practice, and went on a sabbatical. This is my coming out party at the Wabi Sabi Gallery in downtown Twin Falls, Idaho, as an artist. We celebrate all that is imperfect and impermanent. 

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Before medical school in 1999, I was just a 20-year-old undergrad who loved art. I went to a college in NJ, which has its own school of the arts. There, I took Figure Drawing in Freshman year (during which time I made the various charcoal renderings of nude figures seen in the above piece, such as a rendering at the Met of Bather, by Jean Antoine Houdon, on the upper left corner), Photography in my sophomore year, and even a very short stint in Sculpture (until I realized I had to work with metal). But it was a familiar immigrant story: at the end of my sophomore year, after much debate with my family, I ended up focusing my studies on medicine.

 

Just 2 years later, I enrolled in the state medical school, and as though right on cue, my small artist child inside (we all know the one: imaginative, creative, wide-eyed, full of joy and love) seemed to have been snuffed out and was put on life support for the next 20 years.

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That would change in 2020, when the world stopped. I was a small business owner and had my own medical practice in a city that was one of the hardest hit in the US by an immense onslaught of covid-19 infections. NYC and I came to a screeching halt and went into total lockdown. And during the many daily briefings by our now disgraced NY governor, I picked up a paint brush. I started with a paint-by-numbers number of large poppy flowers, and was instantly hooked. The small artist child within finally woke up from her medically-induced coma as the world burned. I painted many pieces by my favorite artist, Georgia O'Keefe. When RBG died, I tried my hand at painting a human for the first time. I painted flowers - a huge chrysanthemum, and many lilies. 

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I titled this piece "layers of me", as a sort of coming out piece; in the center is a portrait of myself - the version who had been able to hold it together, as a single mom and a solo private practice owner during some of the most trying times of our collective lives, as well as my personal life. I surrounded myself with my own art work, some more than 20 years old, some just a few months old. It took an immense amount of courage to exhibit these very intimate parts of me, and as I peel back the layers, I find more and more of myself that I have not seen in many, many years. 

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I hope you enjoyed your visit to the gallery, and to this website. Please click here to see all of the pieces used for this layered collage.

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Materials: Photograph, glue, foam; original art: charcoal, acrylic. $750.