As an artist, it is sometimes difficult to get started on a work of art. You may sit at a blank canvas, in a quiet studio, waiting for inspiration to strike you into creating your masterpiece. This daunting situation is no doubt familiar to fellow artists, but imagine that canvas is a person staring right back at you. Board member and medical illustrator Mary Bryson has done just that recently. And as for the usual 3-foot personal boundary we can all expect in daily life, forget about it! Personal space is non-existent in this situation.

             Mary has been a medical illustrator for the past 20 years. She realized this was her calling in her junior year of high school, dissecting pigs and drawing their organs in Biology class while attending The Westminster Schools of Atlanta. She thought that she could combine her interest in art, with a more practical science degree in medical illustration. She received a BFA in graphic design from Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, and went on to study medical illustration at University of Illinois in Chicago, choosing this school because it was the only university at the time to offer computer courses in illustration. AT&T had given them a grant to develop the software that is now used to simulate the aging of missing children. Mary worked on making the end result look more lifelike, and less like a mannequin. She spent the next 10 years establishing herself as a freelance medical illustrator. Her work has appeared in medical and nursing journals, textbooks and in medical legal applications.

            After a brief stint in Wilmington DE with her husband Jamie, she moved to the Langhorne area and started a family. With Jamie ensconced in the area's pharmaceutical industry, Mary continued with her illustration, taking time to explore the fine arts, most notably pastel landscape and still life in oils.

            The opportunity to paint on the human body came when a company named Teleflex contacted her in 2002. Andre Boezaart was developing a new regional anesthesia stimulating catheter. To demonstrate this new device, Mary painted a woman in a bathing suit showing all the nerves and muscles, as if she had no skin. Video and photos were taken to illustrate the technique, and Mary's career had taken a new turn.

            This lead to another project, when Teleflex flew her to Las Vegas to a nurse's convention for vascular access. Her job there was to paint a man with the vascular system, including the heart and major arteries and veins, so participants had a more realistic model to demonstrate where to place needles and ports. By this time, she realized the value of having a rapport with her model, and had recruited a friend to be her subject.               

             "I am working on these people for six hours, and I like to know I can talk to them for that long" Mary said.

            Her latest project was for the Franklin Institute, in conjunction with the Body Worlds II exhibit. The Institute folks found Mary through an Internet search, and asked her to paint a young man with the musculature you see in the exhibit's plastenated cadavers posed in various physical activities. She donned her specially painted "skeleton" smock, and painted him in the public space of the institute, under the watchful eyes of exhibit goers, and occasionally answering questions from the crowd. Her subject then was paraded through the Reading Terminal Market and on the Art Museum steps.

            Mary uses a special body paint, having tried artist acrylic and tempera paints that tend to crack when dry. It is a challenge to get the whole project done in six hours, so that the model can be shown in whatever demonstration, then the paint removed at the end of the day. It is also a challenge to paint a subject, such as the Franklin Institute guy, when you don't share interests. Mary had a hard time coming up with six hours of sports talk!

For more information about Mary Bryson's work as a medical illustrator, please visit her site at http://www.brysonbiomed.com/.