The Irish-British artist Francis Bacon – known for his obtuse, macabre paintings – once remarked that “the job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” These words could be interpreted as a warning not to shy away from the uncertainties of one’s life. Alternatively, they could be read as a command – dig deeper into the mystery of life. Applying this concept to ophthalmology and all its remaining "mysteries," we see how clinicians and researchers in the field continue to persevere with ongoing, unresolved questions like: What are the exact causes of glaucoma? And what causes some AMD patients to progress rapidly while others remain stable for decades?
While these clinical questions currently remain unanswered, it is worth considering how art – the creative mode of attempting to understand things beyond our limits – might be combined with science as a way of navigating these mysteries. Our 2025 Art of Eyes feature, published in June, sought to unite the medical practitioner and the artist, namely those working in ophthalmology who also have aspirations as creatives. The submissions we gathered were far-reaching and varied, but all the selected pieces – in one way or another – were thematically linked in their attempt at “deepening” the mysteries surrounding eye disease.
Medical illustration student Sharon Whinston’s “A Look at Keratoconus,” for example, was an attempt to visualize and thus understand the fear she felt as a child when her brother was diagnosed with the condition.
Robert Rehak, a Practice Educator for Ophthalmic Vision and Science , offered up an anterior segment fluorescein and indocyanine green angiography (FFA/ICG) of a patient with corneal neovascularization, an image striking in both its bleakness and beauty. “Despite the severity of the condition, I feel this image of the pathology looking like a tree represents hope that things will get better,” Rehak said, dedicating the image to his long-gone parents.
Jackson Bloch, a third-year medical student at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, meanwhile, depicted an abstract watercolor landscape of a retina infected with neuro-invasive West Nile virus, with a lone figure rowing through the scene “struck by the surrealness of disease.”
From another perspective, Los Angeles-based ophthalmologist Kayur Shah chose to focus on a self-portrait. “‘Iris Of A Surgeon’,” Shah explains, “was inspired by the awe I felt the first time I used a slit lamp to examine the iris. The painting is based on a slit lamp photograph of my own eye… [reflecting] the unique perspective a surgeon gains through his work.”
Our team greatly enjoyed selecting those images we felt best represented how the mysteries of these diseases should not only be deepened, but enriched as well.
If you missed our Art of Eyes 2025 feature, please do take a look at our digital version here. And don’t hesitate to let me know what you think about our chosen images: Alun.Evans@Conexiant.com.
While these clinical questions currently remain unanswered, it is worth considering how art – the creative mode of attempting to understand things beyond our limits – might be combined with science as a way of navigating these mysteries. Our 2025 Art of Eyes feature, published in June, sought to unite the medical practitioner and the artist, namely those working in ophthalmology who also have aspirations as creatives. The submissions we gathered were far-reaching and varied, but all the selected pieces – in one way or another – were thematically linked in their attempt at “deepening” the mysteries surrounding eye disease.
Medical illustration student Sharon Whinston’s “A Look at Keratoconus,” for example, was an attempt to visualize and thus understand the fear she felt as a child when her brother was diagnosed with the condition.
Robert Rehak, a Practice Educator for Ophthalmic Vision and Science , offered up an anterior segment fluorescein and indocyanine green angiography (FFA/ICG) of a patient with corneal neovascularization, an image striking in both its bleakness and beauty. “Despite the severity of the condition, I feel this image of the pathology looking like a tree represents hope that things will get better,” Rehak said, dedicating the image to his long-gone parents.
Jackson Bloch, a third-year medical student at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, meanwhile, depicted an abstract watercolor landscape of a retina infected with neuro-invasive West Nile virus, with a lone figure rowing through the scene “struck by the surrealness of disease.”
From another perspective, Los Angeles-based ophthalmologist Kayur Shah chose to focus on a self-portrait. “‘Iris Of A Surgeon’,” Shah explains, “was inspired by the awe I felt the first time I used a slit lamp to examine the iris. The painting is based on a slit lamp photograph of my own eye… [reflecting] the unique perspective a surgeon gains through his work.”
Our team greatly enjoyed selecting those images we felt best represented how the mysteries of these diseases should not only be deepened, but enriched as well.
If you missed our Art of Eyes 2025 feature, please do take a look at our digital version here. And don’t hesitate to let me know what you think about our chosen images: Alun.Evans@Conexiant.com.
