The late afternoon sun forms a triangle on the wall of my studio, brightening half of the painting mounted on the wall, and leaving the other half in relative darkness. I close the door, hang my stethoscope and white coat on the easel, and take off my scrubs. I pull on my paint-stained pants and shirt. My shoulders drop and my chest unclenches as the stress of a full day working in the Coronary Care Unit slowly lifts away.

One by one, I grab the tubes of oil paint and squeeze out the colors onto my palette. The viscous paint feels familiar as it moves under my brush, and I ease my body and mind into the work of painting. I look at the composition that is starting to emerge, still an undefined tangle of colors pushing their way up from the white surface. The careful observation and synthesis of information in my day job gives way to intuitive painting. My mind exhales the moments of the day, releasing them from my body as it paints: the moment when my patient looked at me with gratitude in his eyes, calmer on the ventilator with the increase in his sedation medications. The moment when I performed CPR on a patient who was coding upon arrival to the ICU, her lips an ultramarine blue much like the one on my palette. The tearful eyes of the overwhelmed intern looking at me from behind his mask, wondering if he really needed to enter the isolation room to do the procedure we discussed on rounds. I am relieved to be standing before this painting, consoled by the familiar thickness of paint under my brush, and I know it is these moments in the studio that allow me to go back to the bedside day after day.

As the hours pass, I think back to the previous year which I spent away from my medical practice, working as an artist in a small Paris studio. The full immersion into painting was something I had fantasized about since my double major in art and biology at Swarthmore decades before, and was a welcome change from my dual life as doctor and painter, which I had been struggling to keep up for many years while also raising a family. The physical and psychological distance from my medical work allowed me time to cultivate my painting, to read, reflect, and ultimately (and surprisingly) led me back to my choice to resume my cardiology practice.

I finish painting as the last of the natural light disappears, and start cleaning my brushes under the fluorescent light of the studio. As is my usual practice, I prepare for my next studio session by moving the finished painting, and hanging a blank canvas on the wall next to my notes on what to work on in the coming days (I do this in case my schedule at the hospital prevents me from returning to the studio for a long stretch of time). Scribbled next to this list I have written a reminder to myself on the wall: Make a bad painting, no one will die.

The next morning, as I put my arms through the plastic gown, fingers in gloves, mask and shield on my face to enter the isolation room of my COVID positive patient, I think of the white canvas on my studio wall, and the image that is waiting to come forth with the colors of my paint brush.

Nazanin is an Iranian-American artist and cardiologist. She grew up in Iran during the turbulent years of the Islamic Revolution and war with Iraq. In Iran, she studied Persian calligraphy, miniature painting, and music. In her art, Nazanin grapples with her dual identities as an Iranian and American to shed light on what happens when what seems disparate comes together.

In her practice, Nazanin is the director of the Cardiac Care Unit at Einstein Medical Center. She draws on the relationships with her patients, many of whom are critically ill, as well as their diagnostic imagery, for inspiration in the studio.

Her work can be seen here as well as here.

Donning and Doffing: Medicine and Art in the COVID-19 Era