About the Art

Years ago, I worked in the basement of the University of Michigan Hospital designing websites and doing medical illustration for the Department of Surgery. My desk usually looked like this:

My screens looked like this:

And I spent weeks studying pictures of internal organs and surgical horror, trying to figure out how to design them into into clean-looking icons and logos.

That job was pretty tough. Sometimes I had to look at pictures of car accidents and surgery photos. But most of the time I was holed up in my office, looking at CT scans and photos of different types of tissues under a microscope. 

I'd take those images and make medical illustrations or graphic design treatments like this one:

After working on this type of imagery all day, I'd go home and dream about it. My subconscious mind would take these organic forms, skew them, twist them, add fantastical elements, colors, and dream emotions. I'd wake up at 3am with a compulsion to paint them.

Over time, my work became more sophisticated. I began to sketch the forms in my notebook first, then take them to the canvas.

I started to make large, contemporary pieces like this: 

As I continue to practice, I keep pushing color and form but my work stays rooted in medical imagery.

Over the years, my work has become more abstract and colorful. Since many microscopic components of the human body are too small to see under an SEM, I take a lot of creative liberties and focus on communicating the essence of the subject. For example, here's what I did with serotonin: