I thought it would be fun to mix it up a little bit and highlight some of my interests outside of surgery. Throughout my entire life, I’ve always had a particular gravitation towards art and creativity. I’ve always had an itch to work with my hands and keep them busy. It started out mostly with pencil drawing, which eventually evolved to portraits in high school and college. I took a few studio art classes while in undergrad at Georgetown University, which helped me with some of my fundamentals. To be honest, I’m mostly self-taught through art textbooks and YouTube (you really can learn anything through YouTube these days!). I consider myself an amateur artist and I still spend a lot of my free time trying to master a variety of techniques.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that my brain functions best when my input matches my output. In medical school, the input was tremendous. I was bombarded with a so much new information on a day-to-day basis and the learning curve was incredibly steep. At the same time, I consider those 4 years to be my most productive years when it comes to my artwork – as I didn’t have any other outlets like I do now (AKA facial plastic surgery). Any free time that I could scrounge up would be spent making artwork. Most of it was sold to friends and family. I did a few gallery shows in Boston and even had some work displayed at a trendy sneaker store in the South End.
It was also during medical school that I became fascinated with street art, after watching the documentary, “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” Using spray paint and stencil allowed me to create large works in a short amount of time. Here’s one of my favorite pieces I made during those years. I named it Mount Tortoise. The image came to me one day in the form of a doodle and knew instantly that I needed to paint it.
I hope you enjoy!
Cheers,
Dr. G
