"I wasn't always an artist.  I taught myself how to paint, and a previously undiscovered part of me was born. At one point in my life, I thought I had to choose between art and medicine, but I now know that the marriage of the two is what feeds me. Medicine inspires my art, filling my paintings with life and meaning, while painting is my meditation. In medicine, I pour out my energy, as I give of myself to serve my patients with the loving care they deserve.  But art is my transfusion, filling my cup so I am replenished and whole. I believe that we all thrive when we find a way to balance the many facets of ourselves. We are all more than what we do for a living, and we all have our inner artist. I encourage you to set yours free, find your creative voice, and let it speak the wisdom of your heart."  ~Lissa Rankin

Dr. Lissa Rankin was always “makerly.”   As a child, she was always making candles, making poetry, making up stories, making aromatherapy scrubs. But her brother was the artist who got a scholarship to art school. She never even considered herself creative. But then, in her first year of medical school, the rigorous all science curriculum made her crazy, and she started taking art classes in night school. Painting kept her sane throughout her medical education, and she began exhibiting her work professionally in 2001.

Before her Perfect Storm led her to quit her full time medical practice in 2007, Lissa said, “Medicine is my hemorrhage but art is my transfusion.”  Now that she practices a whole new kind of medicine at the Owning Pink Center, medicine no longer drains her. But art is still the oxygen that makes her vital. At one point in her life, her art career and medical career were completely unrelated and fragmented. But Owning Pink has shifted this.  Combining both her medical and artistic backgrounds lead her to create The Woman Inside project, which allows Lissa to integrate all of the facets of her wholeness and shine the light on other women who are also beautiful and whole, in spite of a breast cancer diagnosis.

Lissa’s art is going on national tour and can also be viewed at galleries in Santa Fe, Laguna Beach, Boston, Bethesda, Atlanta, and Galveston.

Visit LissaRankinArt.com