Creative arts can be healing for the healers, too
Thoracic surgeon Mark Hennon, MD, Vice Chair of Thoracic Surgery at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, doesn’t paint often. But judging from his canvas on exhibit in the fourth annual Employee Art Show, many people probably wish he did.
“I might go years in between painting something. I just get motivated,” he says, fresh out of surgery, still in scrubs, adding that he doesn’t remember what originally made him want to pick up a paintbrush. “I think I did a painting in 2004 when I was in my general surgery training. I try to create something that I’ve seen and that I visually want to recreate. It’s a nice little outlet.”
This is the first time he has shown his work in the Employee Art Show in the Roswell Park Art Heals Gallery. Titled “Looking Up at Those Looking Down,” his vibrant acrylic-on-canvas painting is of a cyclist against a blue sky, arms outstretched to the overhead sun as its long yellow rays descend around him. The vision is of a late friend who was a pro cyclist (Dr. Hennon himself is a cycling enthusiast). The aesthetic is at once spiritual and uplifting, hope-filled and comforting – and connects palpably to Dr. Hennon’s critical role as a Roswell Park healer.
“I think in thoracic surgery, we see people struggling and suffering a lot. There is a need to be hopeful and to be able to channel positivity into what we do. Sometimes outcomes are good, but sometimes they are not,” he says. Painting in his basement when he can — between work hours, after the kids are in bed — is a bit of an escape.
He was motivated in part to submit to this year’s Employee Art Show after seeing the art-filled walls in the office gallery of his colleague Francisco Ilizaliturri-Hernandez, MD, Director of Lymphoma Research at Roswell Park, who also owns the Buffalo Art Movement (BAM!) gallery in North Buffalo. “I’m always impressed when I see a colleague become passionate about hobbies and interests outside of medicine and surgery,” Dr. Hennon says.
When asked how creating art might help doctors as well as patients, Dr. Hennon echoes the sentiments of Dr. Ilizaliturri-Hernandez, who commented in 2024 that he thinks of art as a tool for giving him a dimension in his life that is “maybe less stressful than oncology.” Dr. Hennon concurs that for both Roswell Park patients and the medical team that cares for them, creative expression can be a healing balm. “Being able to channel your thoughts and feelings into something that’s creative takes the mind away from the reality in front of you,” he says.
Art opportunities for patients
Our Creative Arts teams hosts a series of interactive and diverse art classes in the Art Heals Gallery - open to all patients and their caregivers!
Connecting the Roswell Park community around art
For Roswell Park Art Coordinator William Vogel, the annual Employee Art Show is a chance to connect the Roswell Park community — patients, caregivers and employees — around art. In addition to its Art Heals Gallery and Studio on the first floor of the hospital, Roswell Park’s comprehensive arts program includes the Alliance Foundation art collection, with more than 1700 diverse works by diverse local and regional artists mounted throughout the main campus; a roving Creative Arts Team and the Kathleen and Joseph Curatolo Pediatric Visual Art Program, which offers arts experiences to Roswell Park’s youngest patients.
“I always try to reach out to our doctors and clinical staff, to make sure that our frontline healthcare workers are included. We want all of our patients to know that their clinical team is just like them, people with hobbies and passions that keep them going through the challenges they face every day. I hope that our patients see that as a model for how to keep their spirits bright, even when faced with stress,” Vogel says. “Our patients appreciate learning more about the doctors, nurses, and professional staff that help care for them, and seeing what our staff members do outside of work.”
Dr. Hennon considers being able to paint outside of work, when he is not treating patients, a pure pleasure. “It’s purely fun. It’s purely for pleasure,” he says. “It’s been an honor to be able to hang my work, and to have it put up in the gallery.”
