Lockdown artwork: putting down the dental drill and picking up the art materials

The link between art and dentistry has provided the inspiration for my recent artworks, especially considering how the two different disciplines greatly complement each other. Historically, dentistry has provided much inspiration for artists: from 19^th Century engravings to early 1900s oil paintings of which there are fascinating examples are in the online British Dental Associations dental Art collection (British Dental Association, 2021). Having developed an “Artistic eye” from a young age through painting, it has helped me enormously in my practical dental work while studying dentistry. In addition, I have found by training my eye in dentistry, especially through restorative dentistry, which includes building skills like looking at cavity preparation and studying morphology, my painting and artwork has been improved greatly. Creating art has provided me with a great outlet for my creativity and also when things become intense day-to-day life as a dental student.

I started my journey as an artist at a young age, when I attended the local village children’s art classes in Rothbury in Northumberland. Here, I was guided in painting and drawing techniques but also took great interest in painting the local Northumbrian scenery and wildlife in all sorts of mediums from acrylic to water colour. I continued to develop and experiment with my art throughout GSCE and A-Level art as well as being commission to paint a local piece of Artwork for the town centre the age of 15.

During the first lockdown in March 2020, with all practical dental teaching was suspended, I found myself with plenty of time on my hands for creating artwork. During this time, the creative spark was first ignited, when reading about Racheal Jackson’s commissioned artwork for the 100^th Anniversary work for the British Dental Society (Jackson, 2020; Quinlan, 2020a). Completely inspired, I decided to explore this link through painting different aspects of dentistry as well as trying to using the process of creating artwork as a new way of learning dentistry. In addition, like many of us, I felt isolated by the Covid-19 Pandemic which inspired me to set up the “Leeds Dental Art Club”, where I virtually ran tutorials and brought dental students together to keep connected and have fun such as painting evenings. This has developed more since returning to University and with other students have ran tooth morphology, skull anatomy workshops online with the hope for them to eventually be in person. It has been a delighted to see other dental professionals and students picking up paint brushes and getting creative! (Quinlan, 2020b).

Figure 1 represents the start of my journey into exploring dentistry through art. For this piece, oil pastels were used along with a new technique to me of using olive oil to blend and control the pastel. I enjoyed adding in extra canals through artistic licence to demonstrates how complex a root canal can be. Inspiration taken from images of diaphanization technique By Holm Reuver (Versiani et al., 2019; Transparentmacher.de, 2021).

This triptych in charcoal, is based on the different types of dental cysts that may be seen on a radiograph (Figure 2).

In August 2020, I was delighted to win the International Art -De St Co- Art competition with this piece (UKDentalCourses, 2021) (Figure 3). It explores the different disciplines that come into creating a smile in dentistry. It captures a number of stories of creating smiles for many individuals that occur everyday in dentistry.

Using watercolour and pen as a new way of learning the anatomy on a Panoramic radiograph (Figure 4).

This drawing was a study of my own dental anatomy in preparation of aesthetic clinical work (Figure 5).

This artwork was made during one of the online workshops ran over the March 2020 lockdown (Figure 6).

This is a full veneer gold crown used to restore teeth painted in oil on board (Figure 7). Inspiration taken from Pearldentalclinic photographs of crowns (Dental Crowns, 2021).

Figure 1. Complex canals.

Figure 2. Charcoal cysts.

Figure 3. Behind the smile.

Figure 4. Panoramic in colour.

Figure 5. Drawing incisors.

Figure 6. Lockdown anatomy sketching.

Figure 7. Shiny gold crown.