Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Body Scan 2023

Dome Witt
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

After being injured in a collision, the artist took to exploring the experience through a series of paintings. A CT scan taken before the repairing of the artist’s hip serves as the base of one of these paintings, entitled Body Scan 2023. Silver foil highlights fractures in the artist’s pelvis, spine, and clavicle. While the foil serves to emphasize the injuries, it also represents complex feelings of grief that accompany the injuries themselves. Red splatters express anger: one of the artist’s injuries was missed for a decade. The anger of being disabled and the frustration of managing all of the symptoms together are also represented. Painting the bones with the fingers, rather than with a brush, allowed the artist to “touch” the injuries involved and begin to process and heal from the physical and emotional trauma endured.

The golden spiral at the top represents a continued journey of healing, as well as the strength to continue to move forward. Healing is not linear, as shown by the spiral, though the design also reflects the feeling of going around in circles. Patches of silver foil peek through it, revealing that grief is still present within the artist’s healing journey.


DOME WITT is an artist and personal development coach from Alberta who has explored a wide variety of artistic mediums for the better part of two decades.

Spring 2023

|

|

One response

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.