Full Circle: From Shadows to Nuances in a Power Failure

 Readying for the opening

 Viewers using cell phones to see paintings in the dark

Dr. Bruce Sawhill and me at the opening

  Full Circle: From Shadows to Nuances in a Power Failure


Last night’s opening of my solo art exhibition ‘The Map and the Territory’ at the Marjorie Evans Gallery in Carmel, California contained a surreal surprise. Life truly imitated art when half an hour into the reception as daylight was fading the lights went out! A tree in the Carmel Forest fell on a power line, answering the question, ‘What happens when a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it?” What unfolded for the next half hour in the darkness made the night unforgettable and reminded me of my long, circuitous art journey.

Years ago, I was a radiologist. I found radiology to be very visual, logical and linear. It was about shadows on films and recognizing patterns. Soon, though, I realized that radiology was too constraining for my temperament and I turned to psychiatry which I found to be more relational, intuitive, and creative. Changing direction from radiology to psychiatry, though seemingly unrelated on the surface, was in fact simply moving ‘from shadows to nuances’ as John Shillito a neurosurgeon and eminence grise at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston told me at the time. This stepping into the mystery, allowing ambiguity, and experiencing ‘not knowing’ was similar to my new experience of painting at the time. As my study of psychiatry deepened, my painting took off.

Last night it occurred to me and my partner, physicist Dr. Bruce Sawhill, that radiology requires lots of electrical power and furthermore every branch of medicine with the exception of psychiatry requires power and machines. It was reminiscent of being in a big dark reading room in radiology. People were pondering paintings with little lights produced by cell phones similar to doctors trying to divine the ineffable inner workings of the human body with xrays, each beam of light illuminating only parts of the body of the painting, and that imperfectly.

At that moment, I began to see the disparate strands of my life knit together. I also realized that a few dozen cell phones cast a surprising amount of light! It was like the Middle Ages where people used candlelight to discern the images before them in the dark vaults of the cathedral. It was delightful to see the inventiveness, imagination, creative problem solving, perseverance, and generosity of the wonderful people there. The art became participatory and came full circle as art imitated life and the viewers rose to the occasion.

January 9, 2015
Nancy Leigh Hillis and Bruce Sawhill