Scientists, Researchers, And Art
I get told—all the time—how my art is beautiful and how happy it makes people feel. This is true, but there’s a deeper story here.
Hidden away from the public, and often in research labs and scientific facilities, are the many people who have dedicated themselves to the study of human health and happiness. They are doctors, researchers, scientists, and more, and I like to read their research results and then transition what I have read into a work of art.
I don’t mind taking credit for being a talented artist, but I never forget all the hours and days and years of intelligent scientific thought and methodology that went into the medical and scientific study results that I read and then use inside my art.
I also like to experiment. Here’s my latest painting using many evidence (research)-based design strategies and suggestions.
Happy Sustainable Melodies by Dorothea Sandra, Acrylic on canvas, 5’x8’
In evidence-based design and art, local scenery is often suggested. Instead of focusing on a snapshot of a local scene, I chose to take in an entire journey within a local area and represent it through art.
This painting was inspired by nature and a trip I took from Pasadena, California, along the super busy Foothill Freeway on my way into the desert area near Palm Springs.
To be exact, in Pasadena, I got on the 210 Foothill Freeway, with the thickly wooded and dark green San Bernardino Forest on my left. As the highway transitioned to US Interstate 10, it started raining, and suddenly, 10 lanes of headlights came on. It was bumper-to-bumper and stop-and-go traffic for a while, and then the rain stopped and the traffic eased up as I entered the California desert area. Still on Interstate 10, I could see Mt. San Jacinto and then the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountains in the distance.
In this painting, I chose the cheerful colors of yellow, muted pink, and orange to represent the mountains.
There is an abundance of sand in the desert, so I used Liquitex’s professional-level unbleached titanium/beige (with a touch of gold) color for the painting’s sky and background.
In evidence-based design, you don’t have to represent everything realistically: for example, you don't always have to create a blue sky.
Every two years, the Center for Health Design requires its certified members to take additional evidence-based design courses in order to recertify. This year, one of my selected CEU courses was The Changemaker-A Pioneer Connecting Art, Medicine, and the Advancement of Evidence-based Design. This course was about Dr. Henry Domke, a physician and photographer. For over 20 years, Dr. Domke practiced as a family physician, which gave him firsthand insight into the stress and anxiety experienced by patients and their families in medical facilities. His healing intent is to use art to create a "healing tone" that provides comfort, reduces stress, and offers positive distractions for patients, staff, and visitors.
Something he said in the video—and I agree with and use all the time in my art—is that an evidence-based design’s composition and focus should not be about the artist. When I paint, it’s not about my ego or my self-glorification. An evidence-based design composition should be created with the patient's needs in mind.
Happy Sustainable Melodies was created as a fun, almost whimsical work of art that reflects a local scenery adventure. With its bright, happy colors, playful stem arrangements, and splashes of green impressionist flowers, it’s also a happy distraction piece.
The brilliant blue color was used to represent a gap between leaving the 210 Foothill Freeway, with its deeper dark colors and thickly populated area, and entering the openness of the desert.
The darkness at the bottom of the painting represents beginning this artistic local scenery journey at the deep-colored and green San Bernardino Forest area. The many plant stems going in many winding and different directions reflect the lanes and lanes of traffic coming in and out, as I traveled on these highways. Midway in the painting, the various colors leading to the desert area show how the scenery transitions from one type of landscape to another.
For people/patients who know the area, this painting—in a fun and happy abstract/expressionism/impressionism style—reassures and comforts and recenters them by visually connecting them to their nature-filled and sustainable beautiful local scenery.
