i was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room when it occurred to me that i know no doctors who paint. well, there was one but he only did landscapes; i meant painting portraits, figurative work.
surely doctors have a good understanding of the human body, a knowledge of anatomies; they see all shapes and sizes and with all sorts of conditions and all parts of it, i reasoned, so why don’t they then?
it was my turn. after the usual weighing, measuring and perusing of blood results, came the prodding and poking, the inspection of reactions, heartbeat, blood pressure, cavities and orifices; the body as biology.
if painting was about revealing, i eventually concluded, there should definitely have been more doctor-artists.
i recently looked again at the work of hollis dunlap and it is in his nudes that i catch a glimpse of what the doctor doesn’t.
