Interview with Pathologist and collagist, Dr Laura Tafe
Creative collages to help bring calm and meaning to life
This month, I am very excited to share my interview with Dr. Laura Tafe, a Pathologist from Dartmouth. I remember when I first saw Laura’s work. I was scrolling through social media, and came across an image (Breath, picture below). I was captivated by its color, its composition and its simplicity. What did this work mean? What about the title? How did the artist create it? I had so many questions. So, I was thrilled when Laura joined our group, the Women’s Physician Artist Consortium (WPAC). We are a group of over 50 Women Artists, creating art about medicine. We meet virtually every month to talk about art, medicine, and creativity. Laura has become an active member of our group, generously sharing her work, her inspiration and her process. She also participates with her beautiful collages in our monthly challenges. Please enjoy this interview with the very creative Dr. Tafe.
Here’s her bio:
Laura Tafe is a physician and collagist who works as an anatomic and molecular pathologist in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Analog collage has been the focus of her creative work since 2019. Tafe has previously published analog collages in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Lifelines, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Literary and Art Journal, the Poetry X Collage journal, and Beaver Magazine and had a collage selected as Cover Art, Honorable Mention, for the Academic Medicine journal. Her work is included in the recently published Artists Remaking Medicine, from Procedure Press. She has exhibited her collages in several group shows at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, NH. You can find her on Twitter at @LJTafeMD.
Where to follow you: (website or social media) Twitter: @LJTafeMD; BlueSky: @LJTafe; Mastodon: @ljtafe@med-mastodon.com
Can you tell us more about your story?
I come from a family of writers, musicians, readers, teachers and I loved art from an early age. I remember that as a small child, about 3, rather than a stuffie, I carried around a little box of paper with me wherever I went. So maybe it was inevitable that I would come to collage. Throughout my adult life, art has remained a touch point for me although I didn’t give it the attention in my life that it deserved. In 2019 I found myself at a branching point. My Mother had died suddenly in 2014, which I still carried heavily, I was experiencing depression and professional-related malaise (Burnout) and I finally realized I had a deep longing and need to create. And so I did. I made it a priority and I’ve learned to trust that part of myself. It has expanded myself and my life in ways I could never have imagined. Eventually, with the support of a few key people, I began to share my art which had led to meeting new people and opportunities such as joining this group, WPAC.
How often do you draw? Does it relieve stress from your job?
Usually, I make collages several times a week. Sometimes I like to challenge myself to make a daily collage. For instance, in the month of February, there is an online collage community event called Februllage where we all work from a daily word prompt and post the collages we created for that word/day. It’s a really nice opportunity to participate in the growing and very welcoming online collage community.
Creating definitely is a stress reliever. I find that I channel whatever I am carrying around with me into my work and if I go a few days without making something, I crave it. It is a form of self-care, of expression, of therapy, of playfulness.
The vast majority of my art practice is non-medical and I love that. It is something of my own, another aspect of myself that has nothing to do with me as a physician. But I am also curious about exploring ways in which my art and creativity can help me further develop myself as a physician with my unique perspective as a pathologist.
When is your favorite time to create/what’s your process?
Mostly I create in the evenings. I have a built-in shelf in my basement laundry room which serves as my “studio” space. My brain being tired from the day I think actually helps me more quickly get into the flow state of making my collages. They tend to be very intuitive. I love the tactile nature of using paper. I work visually without much verbal thought, going by what feels and looks good or appeals to whatever mood I am in. I have many magazines, colored papers and pulled out images that I work from. I gather, I cut, I arrange and glue, usually on watercolor paper but I also like to try other surfaces such as wood or cardboard. I then photograph them for documentation. Sometimes this is done with intention, like when there is a color scheme, idea or theme I want to explore but many times it is spontaneous.
Collage is also very portable and I take simple supplies with me almost wherever I go, work trips, vacation, even my son’s baseball games, so I can make something wherever I am.
Who are your favorite artists?
Oh, so many! My longtime favorites from childhood are Klimt and Mattise who always captivate me with their colors and patterns. Matisse in his later life also made amazing collages of figures which I love. In the last several years I’ve been drawn to Louise Bourgeois and Georgia O'Keeffe, especially their lesser-known watercolors and sketches. There are many contemporary collage artists that I admire and one who particularly stands out for me is Lorna Simpson who uses inks paired with women’s photos from magazines like Ebony and Jet to create gorgeous, powerful portraits. You can find her work here: https://lsimpsonstudio.com/collages/ebony-collages-2014-present
What is your favorite medium (ink, digital, paint, etc) and subject matter?
Analog collages (paper and glue) are the focus of my current artistic practice. I say “current artistic practice” because I am open to this changing completely. Recently I’ve also been incorporating watercolor, acrylic and ink in some of my work. I also enjoy photography and writing and have been dabbling in visual poetry. I find I am drawn to human forms and most of my works include people, faces, body elements in some way.
What would be your dream project?
I would love to do a public art project in the form of translating a collage (or collages) into a large format like a mural or projection on a building. Murals and other street art are one of my favorite forms of art; so accessible and immediately available for people to interact with (or walk right on by and ignore).
Another, more medically related, is a proposed project with the Healing Arts Program at my institution to work with patients who are undergoing treatment for cancer. One way I envision this is to provide patients with histology images of their tumor so that they may incorporate them into their personal art (of course, only if they wish to). I think for some, it could be very powerful to actually see and interact with and transform with art the tumor that they are receiving treatment for.
Do you have any advice for creatives who work in the medical field?
I think there are endless opportunities to incorporate creative elements into our lives and there is no right or wrong way to do this. Find something you’re curious about and prioritize time to explore and practice and play with it. Here’s the secret, you never have to share it with anyone (if you don’t want to), so allow yourself to play, to mess up, to fail and try some more. There is value in having a creative outlet for personal expression and it’s really exhilarating to create something that never existed before. Creativity also helps us build flexibility of thought, comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity, empathy, and appreciating other perspectives. Science and medicine are full of uncertainty and ambiguity and even contradictions and the more comfortable we are with these experiences, the better we can be at the “art of medicine”.
Did you enjoy this artist interview? Please select the link below for more interviews:
https://diagnosketch.substack.com/p/interview-with-surgeon-and-childrens
https://diagnosketch.substack.com/p/an-er-doctors-creative-interpretation