Drawing anatomy

I ground my work in the real, drawing from bones and cadaver dissections in the Anatomy Lab at NYU School of Medicine, and from cutting-edge 3D radiology images of my own body, made for my use as an artist.  But my take on anatomy is personal and sensual, not medical. I work to evoke the textures of real flesh and bone, and reclaim the inner landscape. 

Read the story behind the work (below slideshow)

 

The story behind the art

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For many years I worked from the skeleton and drew my spine itself.  When I became Artist in Residence at the medical school, I gained access to a whole new realm of anatomical reality.

The intricately intertwined muscles, tendons, blood vessels, and nerves I could see in the Anatomy Lab (like the inner structure of a lung, shown here) looked so different from the pictures in medical books, where the individual gives way to the generic, and the texture of real life is smoothed away.  


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Now I could explore my curving spinal cord, and the spinal nerves that struggled to emerge from the narrowed spaces between my scrunched lumbar vertebrae.  In the 3D Lab, I twisted and turned my CT scan images on the Vitrea/Vital Images workstation so I could look up into those spaces at each vertebral level.

In the Anatomy Lab I drew from the spinal nerves themselves, visualizing their pathways from brain to body.  I even got a chance to have my brain scanned and to draw from brain specimens in the neuroanatomy lab.  I focused on the cerebellum, source of movement and proprioception, with its beautiful arbor vitae (tree of life).

I loved the contrast of high technology with hand making and traditional media. My drawings evolved slowly as I learned the new anatomy in increasing depth and detail, exploring the intricate plexuses where the spinal nerves branch off to connect with the sympathetic trunk of the autonomic nervous system. This is where the movement and sensation we’re conscious of intersect with what’s happening below the level of conscious awareness, as the body monitors itself and its relationships with space, time, gravity, and all that is other.


Next: Visible skeleton

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