Mark Reiley the Visual Artist
Mark and his wife spoke to OTW about his art. They explained that his visual work represents and reflects who Reiley was and what he was thinking at the time of each painting. His paintings reflect his personal trials; his sentiments, empathy, nostalgia, moods and feelings for anything around him.
Early in his medical career, Mark’s painting reflected the sentimental and solitary side of his life at the time. For example, “The Surgical Internship,” “Going Home,” “A Walk in the Rock Creek Park,” represent him dealing with his private side while becoming a surgeon and medical innovator.
The more pressure he had as a surgeon and inventor, the more prolifically he painted. That’s the decade from 1985 to 1995. No matter how busy and crazy his day job was, every Tuesday evening and Saturday (if no ER calls arose), he would be in front of canvas or studying art history.
Painting has become a part of him. The process, the creation, the finished painting—all came to represent that most intimate and revelatory of human needs—solace, peace, nature, and beauty.
“Painting gave me a sense of who I was at that time. It made me a better medical intern and allowed ideas to flow in naturally from God knows where to see inventions.”
Getting Started
“I began painting in 1971, on the average ten paintings a year” said Reiley. “That starts to mount up to quite a few paintings in a pretty short period of time. Even if one is throwing away half the paintings every year, they still mount up quickly. By the time I started medical school I had over fifty framed and finished paintings. That was still less than five percent of the paintings I was yet to do over the next forty-five years. It got to be a standing joke with the framers and I, who knew I didn’t show or sell any work, and would say, ‘Oh you don’t want to spend much framing this one.’”
“During my internship I painted one piece. It took fifty-two weeks—the same length as the internship. It was a painting of a huge glacier at night, one tiny campfire, and a guesstimated temperature of forty-eight Kelvin. That was the way I felt as a surgical internal at UCSF.”
“The next three years I shot out of the blocks so to speak. I was cranking out three paintings a week. I had a new teacher who knew the Impressionists inside and out. She even knew how to mix their colors from raw pigments. Learning that instruction allowed no confusion for matching up a color from week to week. Monet, Caillebotte, Sisley, and Renoir invented the greatest movement in art of all time. And remember they were fighting rigid art critiques like George Beaumont who said a good painting should be like a good violin—all brown.”
