Barratt said she has always used her art as an escape – a healthy way to vent after the strains of a tough shift, week or month.
#Spray paint canvas series#
My experiences in the hospital through COVID have been very inspiring, and the new series took flight shortly after that.”ĭr. “However, as I started putting paint on canvas and ink on paper, I realized that I had something new to say. “These sketches were meant to be an extension of a previous series of work, not necessarily an exhibit of their own,” she explained. The works, now featured on the fifth floor of the Health Sciences Education Building as a part of the Program of Art in Medicine, were not initially intended to comprise a gallery open to the public. “Even though the two series are visually very different, they are both meant to explore how, over the course of the past two years, COVID has changed the way that we interact with our surroundings,” Dr. Keep Still Moving Fast - large format paintings - and Trial by Fire - pen and ink drawings - illustrate the juxtaposition of the experiences she had while on rotation in Alaska versus the high-paced environment dictated by the pandemic. And as she logged long hours in the COVID intensive care unit, her paintings and ink drawings were a therapeutic exercise for the complex emotions she was processing. “When physicians take care of their own well-being, it leads to greater job satisfaction, patient safety and healthier relationships.”įor Harriet Barratt, MD, a fifth-year surgery resident, art has always served as a source of inspiration. Now, more than ever, medical trainees and physicians have to be intentional about taking care of their personal well-being,” said Daniel Drane, EdD, director of Wellness for Graduate Medical Education at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix. “COVID exacerbated an already fatigued workforce. The virus took a physical and mental toll, highlighting the importance for physicians to find an outlet outside of work to ease the stress. I hope you enjoyed!īarbara Din is a visual artist, graphic designer, painter, interior designer, crafter, musician and writer living in Argentina.As the COVID pandemic swept across the country, many doctors found themselves engulfed by its omnipresence. Next time you see one of them on the streets, you’ll have more information to appreciate what they’re doing.
Some are flashy and quick, some are introspective and methodical, but they are all wonderful representations of an art form that is here to stay. Watch carefully and see if you can pick a trick or two.
The order in which they apply the paint is not random: there are specific steps to get the final result. They use this a lot to make brushes, tree canopies and clouds, among other things.Īs you watch more and more of these, you’ll realize that layering is crucial. You’ll also see most of them spraying a lot of paint on a scrap piece of cardboard and then using different elements to pick up that paint and apply it on the surface, creating textured marks. You might have tried this as a child in school with oil pastels as the background and black ink on the foreground. This can also be called Sgraffito, a technique which consists on scratching through a surface to reveal a lower layer of a contrasting color. It can be a large piece of magazine paper (they use these instead of, say, newspaper, because it doesn’t absorb the paint and therefore it doesn’t get stuck on the canvas), which generates many different textures, or it can be a palette knife or any other sharp and thin object with which they can make precise marks like tree branches or flying birds. This one gives a vast array of options depending on what’s used to do the lifting. Another typical technique for spray-can painters is the subtractive one, in which they use an instrument or an object to subtract paint and leave either the previous layer showing or the white of the substrate (the surface on which the painting is being applied to).