Why I . . . paint

Katherine Tully’s interest in the care of older people is not only part of her practice, but also the subject of many of her paintings. The GP’s artworks include a series of portraits of older people.

“Sometimes older people feel like they aren’t seen,” Tully says. “Conversely, painting their portraits meant really studying their faces for hours. I’ve had lovely feedback from the sitters about the experience.”

Tully, a GP working with a virtual ward service in Devon, spends time outside of work at her studio creating “large scale, semi-figurative, expressive work in oils.”

“My paintings are about bodies falling apart and we doctors trying to hold them together using whatever means possible, even when it’s clearly futile. And the absurdity of this at times. There is a beauty in the trying, and it comes from a good place, but it’s important to be honest with ourselves and our patients about the limits of what medicine can offer,” she says.

“Having a means to work through some of the difficult and sad stuff I deal with as a clinician is crucial to me. Painting benefits me in terms of my resilience and my ability to remain compassionate and avoid burnout.”

Tully, who grew up in the west of Ireland, has always been creative. She studied medicine in Galway and qualified as a GP just over a decade ago. “At university I was involved in the art society, and I painted on and off, but didn’t pursue it more seriously until I finished my GP training, having realised the importance of maintaining a creative outlet.”

After her medical training she completed a two year, part time certificate in painting at the Art Academy in London in 2017. She went on to undertake the Turps Banana painting programme in south east London in 2019, which led her to “really develop my own painting practice.”

Last September she moved to Devon and rented a studio. “I wanted to make painting part of my new weekly routine. I see painting as essential to my wellbeing,” she says.

Recently her art has involved depicting the curious ways patients describe their symptoms. “Patients have said things like, ‘My head feels like it’s in a cloud,’ or ‘My feet feel like lead.’ Or they’ve described palpitations as ‘people dancing on my chest.’ I try to figure out a way to paint these descriptions, but not in a purely illustrative way.”

For Tully, painting is also a way of problem solving; there’s a lot of decision making involved. “This helps with my ability to problem solve in other aspects of my life,” she says.

It’s also lots of fun. “For me, the ‘looser’ and more intuitive the painting, the better. It’s about painting from the heart, painting freely without self-consciousness,” she says.

Having taken part in group exhibitions and a solo show in 2023 in London, in the future she would like to create a body of work for another solo exhibition. “People often ask me if I’d like to be an artist full time, and I tell them no, I love my clinical work. If I weren’t a doctor I’m not sure I’d be so driven to paint.”

To other doctors she says, “If you were ever in any way creatively inclined and you have not had the opportunity to pursue your creativity, it’s never too late.”

For Tully, “painting is a gift that I get so much out of. And for me, it’s an obvious and enjoyable way to process and deal with life and its challenges.”