THE ANATOMY LESSON

I was inspired by Leonardo de Vinci’s, “the Anatomy Lesson”, where he painted medical students around a dissected cadaver. What if I was to move this concept forward in time 400 years? I felt to use a live model and make her the focal point.

I know physicians use living as well as dead models (as human anatomy’s fullness and vibrancy ceases to exist from one state to the other).I love anatomy! One of my greatest joys is to discover new forms to sculpt on the body (the shape of a bone, the bulge of a muscle, how cloth falls from stress points, what muscles do when stretched). I learn a new form as though I just found a new flavor of ice cream.

Discovery is learning! Whether that learning be forced or embraced, (i.e. compulsory or passion filled) experience equates into knowledge – from which wisdom can be born.

SCOTT ROGERS

I never realized how much influence Norman Rockwell has had on my artwork – until this piece. I love the arrangement of characters, each being the totality of ‘themselves”.  I love that men are angular and women curvaceous. I love, like he did, to create windows of humanity – the interplay of characters – each in his own little world, and intimately involved in the lives of others. When I find a new form, while studying anatomy, it is like eating candy to my eyes. I get excited discovering a new form on the body to create in clay. I marvel at this creation of form (the body). I depict here, a medical college (circa 1900) where a physician, intern, nurse and model are all intertwined in an anatomy lesson.