The Eyes Have It

Beauty rendered from deformity.

“Because I am an artist and tend to think in visual terms, I needed to be able to picture what my scoliotic spine looked like. As I began to learn about anatomy, I realized that the imagery was quite visually compelling, and could be interesting on many levels, from the literal to the metaphorical. I decided to undertake “an artistic inquiry into scoliosis.” I would use my artist’s duality: living through the experience and at the same time observing it and turning it into art. Scoliosis is a flawed model of the beautifully designed human musculoskeletal system, but I wanted to portray it as having its own more complex beauty, one that viewed deformity as differentness, and differentness as individuality.”

50 of these multi-layered paintings based on medical images of the artist’s own skeleton are currently being exhibited at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.