In his series of articles on the art of drawing, artist and author James McMullan speaks to that intuitive intelligence which the visual artist needs to cultivate in order to capture forces inherent in the human body:
Once we tune into these cooperative forces that animate the body, they seem obvious; yet opening up the kind of intuitive intelligence we need in order to see these forces is difficult when we are so used to relying mainly on the simple scanning operations of our eyes. As we draw, we need to record pressures and not just edges, and we need to see relationships between parts rather than just pieces of the body.
Reading these words, I was struck by the similarity between the art employed in drawing the human figure and the art of the practice of medicine. Both require the use of intuition to recognize the forces in play before the eyes of the observer. more»
Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years. His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."