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