Art for Women & Medicine

“Don’t Tell Them” by Maya Srinivasan, woodcut

This past March, I was named the 2025-2026 Artist in Residence (AIR) for the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA). This position illuminates the narrative that threads many facets of my identity, allowing both my artistic passion and identities as a doctor, surgeon, and woman to come together in pursuit of creativity.

The AMWA has promoted the artistic endeavors of women in medicine for the past decade through their artist in residence program, which affords 1-2 women artists in medicine each year the opportunity to focus on their artwork in promotion of women in medicine. The award is presented at the AMWA annual meeting, and each artists’ pieces are presented and displayed at the annual meeting the following year. AIRs are awarded a stipend and are initiated as members of the group Studio AMWA, which provides AIRs a community of women artists to share with and learn from throughout the year. Each month, members of Studio AMWA come together virtually to discuss artwork, arts-based initiatives in their respective medical fields, and plans for the upcoming year to continue to promote women artists in medicine.

Currently, I am a general surgery resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in my third year of seven. I am also a graduate student pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design while researching the integration of arts-based educational methods in medicine. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be this year’s artist in residence. For me, creating art—specifically carving into a woodblock to create relief that I will then use as a matrix to print an image—enhances my practice in surgery and vice versa. Not only is the process of carving and etching with blades of various shapes and sizes akin to surgical dissection in its physicality, but also the three dimensional visual analysis required to both plan and execute a woodcut print or copper etching and perform an operation is similar in its approach. The more I gain agility and delicacy in my relief carvings, the more confident I feel wielding the knife against my patients’ bodies. Beyond the physical experience, creating artwork allows me to express the emotional highs and lows, the ethical conundrums, and the deep vulnerability both my patients and I experience as I learn to be a surgeon in the current structures of medical education.

Having the opportunity to focus on this synergy in my artistic and surgical practices is invaluable as I begin to build my career within this intersection. The AMWA Artist in Residence position will be a critical steppingstone toward being both an artist and a surgeon, each practice strengthening the other in unique harmony.

Maya Srinivasan,
Bonomi-Matty Visual Arts in Healthcare Research Fellow