The Bypass Graft

The inspiration for the painting comes from my practice in vascular surgery in Memphis and fellowship training in transplantation and vascular surgery in Detroit. I wanted to make the harvested saphenous vein as the focus of my painting, just as it is the key element in a number of cardiovascular operations, such as femoro-popliteal bypass and aortocoronary bypass.

The artist creates a focus for a work of art, then arranges the different elements of the painting around it to show their relationships to it using various techniques. The goal is a composition that satisfies the artist and, it is hoped, the viewer. A well-composed painting will intrigue and invite the viewer and communicates the artist’s statement.

Simplification is one of the most important skills of an artist. The subject of the painting is obvious to a surgeon, but it may be obscure to a lay viewer. To bring attention of the central element of painting to the viewer, I have emphasized the saphenous vein by making it larger than it is in real life (Fig. 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Vascular Surgeons. Work done on a toned hard panel, 21 × 14, using soft Pastels. 2016.

The use of a very limited pastel palette illustrates the concept of simplicity of composition. The painting uses yellow-orange, blue, and white exclusively. The composition directs the viewer to read the figures from left to right: the white reflection on the glasses of the first assistant, followed by the extended hand, then the stretched vein, and finally the faces of the surgeon and the second assistant. The anesthesiologist is barely visible and therefore is part of the background. The scrub attendant in the foreground faces rearward and thereby directs the viewer back toward the surgeons.

The use of the warm colors, when properly executed, bring figures that belong in the foreground forward, and cooler colors that make figures in the rear appear to recede, an effect already enhanced by the intensity of operating room onto the central field. Artistically speaking, the hope is to convey a sense of volume on a flat surface.

As an aside, the electrocautery held by the surgeon is blue, the dominant color of the painting. Its tip, however, is yellow—actually maize—the colors of the University of Michigan, the undergraduate alma mater of William Bovie, the inventor of the modern electrocautery device. ¹ The stretching of the vein and the cautery form the letter V, evoking the school fight song, “The Victors,” played after every Wolverine touchdown.