While working as a lab technician in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Virginia after college, I learned about medical illustration. One day, a lab associate inquired about a sketch I was working on lying on my lab table. I explained that we were submitting cover art to the Journal of Neurosurgery to accompany 3 articles about research being conducted in our department. The Journal of Neurosurgery encourages authors to submit cover artwork, rather than hiring an artist, and to my excitement, my artwork was accepted!

The associate then responded, “You should talk with my wife, she is a medical illustrator”. This piqued my interest, I could build a career illustrating medical and scientific topics! I was at her office that week, and the following weekend, I visited the Department of Art as Applied to Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions to learn about prerequisites. Thus began my journey weaving science and medicine with art as a medical illustrator.