
When the Science of Medicine meets the Art of Medicine to save lives in the COVID unit at Vancouver General Hospital.
ECMO stands for Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation but could also stand for Ever Compassionate Medical Optimism, thanks to the dedication of our frontline healthcare workers epitomized by the caring nurse-specialist portrayed in the picture.
Thanks to Dr. Adam Thomas for his photograph that was the inspiration for my drawing.
pencil drawing
national day of mourning

Drawing in the studio today allowed me to spend a few hours in quiet reflection on this National Day Of Mourning, a day that perhaps has never been more meaningful, as we remember and honor those who have lost their lives or been injured from their time in the workplace.
I would particularly like to honor the memory of Dr. Lorna Breen, a New York City emergency room doctor, a true hero, and send heartfelt condolences to her family, colleagues and friends.
The drawing was inspired by a photograph taken by Marco Bertorello in the Covid-19 ward of Maria Pia Hospital in Turin.
Discover Challenge: Portraits
For this week’s Discover Challenge Michelle asks us to “…share a portrait.”
I loved this challenge as it took me to the bottom drawer in the studio once again to re-discover drawings of mine from many years ago, some from my schoolboy days in the sixties. The feature portrait of course is of my wife and daughter, just a few months old in 1976, who now forty years later has a beautiful baby daughter of her own.
After delving through the files and folders here is a selection of the portraits
some of whom you may well recognize.
…and just one more for my daughter.
Studio 365: Day 320
The Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, 31st August, 1962
One more page of drawings from my summer in Paris in 1962. I somewhat foolishly imagined myself as a young Toulouse Lautrec as I sketched the cast of characters in the gardens and around the fountain that day: the young boys sailing their model boats, the loving couple out for an evening stroll, the guitarist filling the air with his music and the lady sleeping soundly on the bench. The drawings may be primitive when looked at today but they capture a peaceful precious moment in time in a city that continues to be very much in my heart and thoughts today.
Studio 365: Day 319
I wrote, on Studio 365: Day 11 after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, how I fell in love with Paris on my first visit there as a young boy in August 1962. I posted a drawing I had made sitting in the Tuileries Garden on a beautiful summer’s Day. Now, here I am on Day 319 once again expressing solidarity and sympathy through the best way I know how with all those mourning today in Paris, in France and around the world. The drawing from that same never-to-be-forgotten visit in 1962 is of one of bridges over the Seine, when one of the most beautiful cities in the world inspired a young boy who has felt that inspiration ever since. Je suis Paris.
