Laura Ferguson

An artist in the world of medicine

Doctors were powerful figures in my life, and during the year of my surgery and cast they had caused me pain both physical and psychic.  So I never expected to become an artist in the world of medicine.

But when I began working with doctors as an artist and fellow professional – having medical images made for the purpose of art, and gaining access to the anatomy lab where I could draw from cadaver dissections – I felt respected and seen in a way I never had as a patient. 

These doctors appreciated my work.  They told me it gave them insights into what it felt like to inhabit a body like mine, and allowed them to see beyond the deformed spine to the humanity of the person. Yet the medical establishment did not seem open to an aesthetic that saw spinal curves – or any unusual anatomies – as graceful.

What if medical students and professionals could look at anatomy with the eyes of an artist, I wondered, and come to see it non-judgmentally, by making art themselves?  Wouldn’t it be great if art could remind them how personal and meaningful our anatomies are – to all of us?

This was my goal when I proposed the idea of an artist residency at the NYU School of Medicine in 2008.

Drawing is a mode of coming to know, in the art-science tradition of Leonardo da Vinci, and gaining access to the resources and expertise of the medical school was a gift for my work as an artist.  And learning through drawing, in that Renaissance spirit of inquiry, was at the heart of Art & Anatomy, the innovative drawing class I created (and taught for twelve years, and which continues on, with artist Kriota Willberg) in the Master Scholars Program in Humanistic Medicine.

On class evenings, the Anatomy Lab is transformed into a studio, with art supplies set out on tables and a great spirit of creative enterprise.  There, med students, doctors, and other health professionals learn to see anatomy with the eyes of an artist, and appreciate the unique beauty of every body, however different.

I’ll use some of the students’ own words (from the book Art & Anatomy: Drawings) to tell you why the opportunity to “sit in front of a cadaver with paper and pencil” has such a powerful effect.

To “look at the body with the eye of an artist,” one student wrote, made her feel “blown away by the complexity, elegance, and even beauty of the bones and organs that I saw when I changed my perspective. Laura showed us how to see the inherent beauty in bodies of all shapes and sizes, to focus on the incredible details and appreciate the amount of variation that exists in all of us.”

That’s exactly the non-judgmental point of view I hoped to instill – the recognition that our inner landscapes are unique and individual, and that art can help us to connect with them more closely.  What better place to harness its power than in the Anatomy Lab, where the dissecting of a cadaver begins a process of emotional detachment for many med students. 

“Initially, the anatomy laboratory was a daunting place.” one student wrote. “Many of us had never seen a cadaver before, let alone dissected one. Through drawing, I was able to achieve a level of comfort in the lab that was previously elusive. It was as if changing the approach to them shifted the relationship we had with our cadavers.”  

In another student’s words, “creating art is a meditative experience, and the Art & Anatomy course helped me take that mindfulness into the anatomy lab and find beauty in what otherwise would have been a highly distressing experience.” 

Seeing anatomy as beautiful can be profound.  It’s a way in to anatomy that’s more personal, less generic – that sees and values individuality.  These artists are imagining the living body as they draw: looking at bones and cadavers but imagining the person who once inhabited them, and imagining the living, moving anatomy within themselves.