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Yale Medicine, Winter 2004
Working on a broad canvas,
physician-artist finds perfection amid life’s many flaws
It is 5:30 a.m., and the sun hasn’t yet risen
on this fall day in Providence, R.I. On the third floor of an old house in the
historic East Side of town, Cheng-Chieh Chuang, M.D. ’95, holds his
watercolor brush in his hand.
This is how Chuang begins each day—in his studio. The meditative focus of
painting prepares him for the hectic pace of his solo family practice in
Taunton, Mass., a blue-collar town just across the state line. It allows him to
work as an artist, a lifelong interest and parallel career to medicine.
Painting also serves as a philosophical foundation for Chuang. When he chooses a
subject for his detailed, nearly photographic watercolors—usually something
from nature—he does not avoid objects that seemed flawed, like a maple leaf
with a scaly patch. “All those scars are beautiful in themselves. Nothing is
perfect in this world,” says Chuang. He tries to retain this perspective when
meeting with patients. “I try to see them as perfect beings, despite their
imperfections.”
For four years after his residency in family practice at Brown University,
Chuang’s desire to travel and paint while practicing medicine led him down an
unusual path. He spent half his time on the road doing locum tenens work and
half his time at home in Providence, painting. He lived in a dozen communities
for several months each, from Maine to Alaska and from Minnesota to New Mexico,
where meeting patients gave him a more nuanced view than that of a tourist. In
the fall of 2002 he settled full time in Providence and has established an
Internet site to display his paintings and sell prints (See http://www.fromearthtosky.com/).
Chuang also combines his interests by teaching a
course in art and medicine to Brown medical students. They explore how art can
improve their powers of observation and enrich both their own lives and those of
their patients. Chuang wants his students to view physicians in the way that he
came to see them as a child growing up in Taiwan (where his adventures sometimes
ended with a trip to the doctor): not just as scientists but as “renaissance
men/women.”
Chuang is looking for a house near his practice in Massachusetts, where he hopes
to combine his office with an art gallery and a “healing garden.” Having
worked much of his career in subsidized clinics in medically underserved areas,
he is tempered by the realities of private practice, of having to worry about
the bottom line in addition to simply providing quality care. But he’s happy
with the work. “Family practice constantly reminds me to be curious about
everything in life, including the human condition.”
And he tries to see each day as a gift. “There is so much adversity. … But
most of us go through daily life without any big problems. That in itself is a
miracle. That’s something we take for granted, like the air.”
—Cathy Shufro |
From Earth To Sky