Art & Medicine

Internship allowed Megan Stuart to combine her loves of art and medicine.

At first glance, the portrait’s eyes catch your attention. Then one notices the expression and captured emotion. Also, the subject’s head is slightly off-center and the body is positioned with one shoulder higher than the other.

According to her high school art teacher, Megan Stuart has always had those features in her artwork. In fact, it’s what makes her work stand out.

“My favorite thing about painting portraits is the challenge of capturing the eyes of the subject I’m painting,” said Stuart, a senior majoring in biology with a premedicine specialization while also pursuing a degree in studio arts—all while compiling a 3.701 GPA and playing basketball for the Jackrabbits. “The eyes tell so much about the person, they are what inspire me the most.”

That’s easily seen when one asks Stuart about her paintings—her eyes light up, a smile appears and she starts to blush a little.

However, to get her animated, all one needs to do is ask about her recently completed art internship with Sanford Health. She spent the summer working with patients at the Sanford Children’s Hospital and the Sanford Cancer Center in Sioux Falls. The internship allowed Stuart to combine her loves of art and medicine. When her days at State end, she plans to attend medical school.

In fact, Stuart’s eyes give away her thoughts about medicine. It’s obvious that is where she plans to make the biggest impact for people. For now, she’ll let art take the lead.

Art Success

In high school, she painted portraits of her coach’s son, her art teacher and her principal. Stuart entered those works into the Les Farrington Best 100 Juried Art Exhibition, held annually at the AZ Gallery in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Todd Clercx, her art teacher at Roseville (Minnesota) Area High School, has several of her paintings in his collection.

“There’s a combination, a choice of colors, the angles … I can just tell when it’s her painting,” said Clercx, who taught her for two years. “At her age, she has found a way to create her own style. Her color use, brush strokes and consistency in those areas are hers.

“And one other thing about Megan, I bet she didn’t tell you she won it, did she?” said Clercx of the Les Farrington event which had approximately 2,300 entries, featuring Saint Paul area high school art students.

While Stuart credits Clercx for helping her find her passion for art, he shrugs off the praise.

“She’s got the ability to see what she wants and somehow do it,” he said. “She doesn’t coast on the gifts she’s been given. She pushes them beyond what most people do. You know the Malcolm Gladwell book, “Outliers” which talks about the 10,000-hour rule?

That’s her. She will figure out a way to do it as she’s hungry, visually hungry to make her skill level match her imagination.”

Power of art

That imagination helped her turn a picture she saw on Facebook into a surprise for South Dakota State women’s basketball coach Aaron Johnston.

Stuart and her teammates surprised Johnston after a summer workout in 2013 when she walked into his office with a large covered object. That object was a painting of Johnston’s son, Dylan.

“When you see the size of it, the amount of work and time Megan put in to make it happen, it just grabs you because it looks so much like Dylan. It has the facial expressions he would have. He’s just a happy-go-lucky, smiling little boy. And Megan really captured it in a really neat, neat painting,” said Johnston. “It was a little bit of an overwhelming experience to think that somebody would take the time to do that for our family. I was really kind of struck by that.”

Johnston’s reaction was just what Stuart intended.

“The subjects I choose inspire me in some sort of way—whether it’s an amazing photograph or a person who means a lot to someone—that’s why I chose my coach’s son or my high school art teacher,” she said. “The painting means a lot to me or another person.

“When I see a blank canvas, I see an opportunity to create something really special for someone,” continued Stuart. “I feel like it gives me the ability to try and make them smile or feel how powerful art can be.”

Elsa

During her internship, Stuart painted portraits in the cancer center lobby, visited the infusion centers where patients receive cancer treatments and stopped by rooms in the Children’s Hospital. One of her projects was a cancer mask for Alexis, a 4-year-old girl, who has an inoperable brain tumor. Stuart painted Elsa, a character from the Disney movie Frozen. Elsa is Alexis’ hero.

When Alexis saw Stuart prior to her final Sanford treatment, she ran to her. Both individuals’ faces lit up.

“We kind of figured on some images, but because the mask is full of holes it’s not going to look like a solid portrait but we did the best we could,” said Jessie Park, expressive therapist and program coordinator of Sanford Arts. “I think the best idea to come out of it was Megan’s idea to put glittery snowflakes on it. Glitter with a little girl always wins.

“When Alexis saw it, all of the radiation techs said her face just lit up,” continued Park. “At that point, you know they kind of forget about what they’re about to do because they think they’re Elsa or they think they’re a Marvel hero.”

Park said the mask allowed Alexis to undergo several of her treatments without sedation and has been told that Alexis did better than most adults when being treated. Alexis completed her treatments at Sanford in July and will spend approximately a month  at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for treatments after a trip to Walt Disney World.

Medical influence

While her impact on Alexis came through art, Stuart thinks she can have a bigger impact on patients through medicine.

Stuart admitted she wanted to ask the patients she met about their illnesses and treatments but knew she had to shut off the medicine side of her mind during the internship.

“After working in this awesome children’s hospital, pediatrics is something I really, really want to look into,” said Stuart, her expressions adding weight to her statement.

When traveling to Mombasa, Kenya, on a 2012 trip with 17 other pre-medicine students from South Dakota State with Elective Africa, she got firsthand medical experience.

“I was expecting that we would be shadowing and following the physicians but what we ended up doing was hands-on, literally,” she said. “I dressed a wound while some people administered IVs, put in sutures, inserted catheters, all sorts of things.

“I felt like I didn’t know very much so I had to take a back seat to things but it just really motivates me to try to go back and help with relief stuff like that,” Stuart continued. “It’s really, really inspiring. I can talk about that trip forever because I loved it, every second of it.”

Stuart’s answer does not surprise Johnston.

“Her trip to Africa, I think, has had a strong impact on her life,” he said. “She still talks about it and how it has influenced her decision to stay in medicine and the type of medicine she wants to practice.

“Megan’s the kind of person who always sees the best in people and the best in things,” Johnston continued. “She’s just a really unique person who has a lot of talents, and she’s good at trying to get to them all on a daily basis to keep herself going.”

Matt Schmidt