12 FYi • Profile


MENDING WHAT’S BRO


Adam Campbell talks with artist-doctor Katy Shorttle on the unique cross-fertilisation in her twin-track career


I


F YOU want something done, ask a busy person, the saying goes – it’s counterintuitive, but at some level we all know it makes sense. There are just some people who seem to be able to cram more hours into a day than the rest of us, to the


point where you can’t help thinking they must be working in their sleep. For Dr Katy Shorttle, this turns out literally


to be the case. Talking about the challenges of her working week, which up until recently involved simultaneously training to be a GP and doing a master’s degree in illustration, she says of her art: “I think there is a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. You might be thinking about something and then you’ll think about it in your sleep and when you wake up, you realise, oh yes, I could do this.” There has even been the odd occasion when sleep was not an option. “I once had a deadline for an art project after a series of night shifts in hospital where I was trying to do art work in between. I ended up finishing the night shifts on a Monday morning and staying up all day to finish my project to hand it in that afternoon,” says the 29-year-old, laughing. Her twin-track career has its obvious difficulties. The seemingly endless process of getting through a medical degree and the subsequent training is gruelling enough on its


own – adding another degree to the mix might seem like folly. But when it comes to art, Katy says, there isn’t really a choice. “I think that if you have to do it, you have to do it. It’s just how you feel.”


Drawing a diagnosis This irresistible creative urge is what first led Katy to take a year out between her preclinical and clinical studies at Cambridge University in order to do a foundation in art. She had always done painting and drawing in her spare time but wanted some more formal training


to bolster her range of techniques and ideas. Later, during her FY2 year, she discovered it was possible to do GP training on a part-time basis, and this was when she hatched her plan to embark on an MA in illustration at the same time.


By this time she had begun a blog entitled


Drawing a Diagnosis, which included sketches of patients (drawn with their permission) alongside a description of their conditions. The blog developed out of a daily visual diary she had started during an elective in Cape Town, illustrating the effects of HIV and tuberculosis on people’s lives, and she was increasingly finding that her medical experiences were informing the direction in which she wanted to take her art.


“I think being a doctor brings a level of


maturity that I didn’t have when I did my art foundation course. I struggled to find the subject matter that engaged me. By the time I applied for the MA I’d done only two years of working as a doctor but they were very formative years and those experiences focused me in terms of my art.” This focus led her to produce a fascinating


“Being a doctor brings a level of maturity that I didn’t have on my art course”


body of work on frailty and the elderly, which was recently on display at Anglia Ruskin University where she did her MA. It was also featured in The Guardian newspaper. “It’s a topic that I feel is really important. A lot of my jobs have been working with the elderly and that’s one of the projects I’m most proud of, which I feel is most resolved in terms of its message.”


Exploring frailty The project features a series of teacups, each given a person’s name and each one altered in some way to depict that person’s situation.


KEN


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16