Michelle Andrews, MD

Finding one’s way to become a painter is always a journey. For Dr. Michelle Andrews, a nationally recognized surgeon, it took a New Year’s Resolution to put her on the journey to become an artist.

Finding one’s way to become a painter is always a journey. For Dr. Michelle Andrews, a nationally recognized surgeon, it took a New Year’s Resolution to put her on the journey to become an artist.

Michelle as an Acclaimed Surgeon … Visualizing Symptoms

Michelle grew up in a small town in Massachusetts where graduated first in her high school class with a love for science and math. After pre-med at University of Massachusetts it was medical school in Philadelphia, residency at Yale, and a fellowship in sports medicine at Cincinnati Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center.

She took an academic orthopaedic surgery position at Johns Hopkins and served as Assistant Director of Sports Medicine. She was the first female orthopedic surgeon to be a major league baseball team physician (Baltimore Orioles).

She moved permanently to Cincinnati to build her own surgery practice, operating at many of our local hospitals. Michelle was named one of the top 125 knee surgeons in America. More recently, she served as chief of the medical staff at Jewish Hospital.

Michelle as Art Spectator … Absorbing from the World’s Best Artists

Art always hovered in the background as she pursued her career. “My favorite underclass subject was Art History. I learned for the first time the importance of light and how a painting came alive when painters controlled the energy and vitality of light. When I was a medical student I was able to take breaks from the intense course load and visit Philadelphia’s art museums. Thomas Eakins’ painting of professor Samuel Gross (The Gross Clinic) was breathtaking and memorable. I began to see subtle relationships between medical problems and their depiction in art … crooked fingers perhaps indicating gout or rheumatologic conditions and yellow skin tones as a sign of underlying liver problems.”

During medical rotations in Boston and San Francisco, she visited museums where she fell in love with Anders Zorn, John Singer Sargent, Antonio Mancini and James Whistler. The Yale University Art Gallery put her inside one of the best collections of American art. The works of Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, and Gauguin at the Cone Collection in Baltimore further opened her art world. She sat in on demonstrations with renowned painters and got to know them personally. She devoured art books and has built an incredible library of her own art books within her studio. As she moved toward retirement, she was ready to become an artist herself.

Michelle as Artist … Life Lessons Now Pouring onto Canvas

Today, Michelle’s paintings reflect the style of Chiam Soutine or Alice Neal. She is fresh and dynamic with her brush. She tries to convey what she feels as she watches a chef at work or is energized by beautiful landscape scenes. Her paint flows rapidly and with boldness, approaching an abstract simplification as she depicts the people who come into her life. “I love the human figure. People captivate me and I want to bring them to life. It is about curiosity and bringing a twist of originality all woven together.”

As Michelle looks back at her life journey, art has always been flowing in her blood just as passionately as she has served her patients. All that knowledge now flows out onto her own canvases.