Collection: Liver Dissection

I was inspired to paint this collection by a single medical illustration I stumbled across when an old textbook of mine fell open. I use that book mostly to flatten papers, but that day I was casually flipping through it, knowing I wanted an idea.

The blood supply of the liver is amazing. When you look at the word "liver," you see it starts with "live." You really need your liver to live. It's easy to think the brain and heart are the critical organs, and they are, but the liver belongs right up there with them and doesn't quite get the credit. It's "low key," as the kids say.

The liver has eight segments, and the way its blood vessels are arranged, segments can go missing while the rest keeps humming along. It regenerates itself. It stores vitamins and minerals. It filters. It has 500 functions, and that's not really an exaggeration.

From an art standpoint, the liver's asymmetry excited me. Many parts of the body come in pairs, that gives you one back up. The liver's eight segments give it many combinations of redundancy built right in, which underscores its importance. And the inner cellular structure has hexagons. Hexagons are the bestagons (search out the video by that name on YouTube). How fascinating that this geometric pattern appears in our own anatomy as well as throughout the natural world?!

My background is in medical illustration, and what I feel is the most special thing I bring to the world is the desire to create art about medical topics in a loose and painterly way, on the edge of abstraction. If you're an expert or curious, you see something.

It is my sincere belief that medical and scientific subjects can be painted without being gross or clinical, and can motivate people to learn about something they didn't know they cared about. This collection was a personal project, one that let me combine art and science in a completely self-directed way.