ABOUT

 

John Russell, a British American Art Critic, said the average time a viewer looks at a painting in a museum is five seconds. Other researchers have measured the mean viewing time maybe as high as twenty-seven seconds. Neither five or twenty-seven seconds seem much return for a painting that may have taken two hundred hours or even more to render. The length of time someone looks at a museum piece is not likely to affect most of us personally, since only a very small percent of artists will ever have a painting in a museum.

 

I practiced orthopedic surgery for just over thirty-years and looking back it feels like much longer than that.  I have been painting for fifty years and looking back it feels more like the blink of an eye – like I'm just beginning to piece together how variations in brush strokes effect the tension in painting. I can still remember what it was like the first time I made color notes on a canvas for an impending impressionistic work.

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I’m reasonably well-known for my medical inventions in Orthopedics but the exposure of my paintings to the public has been limited. For fifty years I have been happy to paint privately and only show my work to family and friends.  Last year I was gathering material to write a “How to Book” on medical innovation. There, staring me in the face, was data showing the relationship between medical device inventions and painting output: four hundred and fifty patents issued;  nine companies (eight on medical devices and one pharmaceutical; two of them had IPO);  about eight hundred canvases painted; over eight thousands surgeries operated; with all those works, I do not know whether the uptick in device inventions and medicine were affected by the visual art study and my increased number of paintings or the other way around.  

 

My wife was fascinated by the possibility that fine art could affect medical work.  She has read a number of research papers that have found a similar relationship. This has made my wife more and more enthusiastic about being an advocate for my paintings.

 

So with the increasing popularity of the virtual gallery, we decided to use the online platform to present some of my paintings. Behind each painting, there is usually a personal story. Some paintings recall the vicissitudes of my surgical training, the bad and the good parts. (I did a painting of my internship – one of the bad parts – that took me fifty-two weeks to paint – the same amount of time to do an internship. The painting is of me alone on an icy glacier at night.)

 

On this virtual gallery, we will also introduce guest artists who love paintings as much as I do. Our goal is to showcase the artworks of medical professionals in addition to mine. Through this channel, we are to promote the understanding of art for those interested from an inventor and surgeon’s perspective. We will invite artists who are also medical professionals, to participate in the discussion on the interaction between medicine and art. We hope this site will be a platform not only exhibit selected art works but also help us to explore,  demonstrate how art education makes difference among medical professionals.

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As mentioned at the beginning of this intro, we were told the average time a viewer looks at a painting in a museum is five seconds. Believing or not believing it,  I am inviting you to navigate our site to find out where,  when and which painting you will lay your eyes on if you have the precious five seconds. I am anxiously looking forward to your feedback.

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                  Mark Reiley