Julian Meagher talks about a painting at the exhibition. Picture by Srinivas

Jamshedpur, Dec. 14: Painting on canvas is a passé as this doctor prefers his patients’ scan plates to express his artistic talent, and today he showcased his work in the steel city.

Aptly titled Scanning, Julian Meagher, is probably the only artist who practices this unconventional art form.

A postgraduate in medicine and working with Wollongong Hospital in Sydney, this is Meagher’s first visit to India where he would display his unique paintings which portray the reality of medical science in a colourful form.

“My paintings illuminate the way we never see beneath the skin and that in everyday life, we try to keep that horror invisible,” said the doctor artist while explaining the purpose of picking up the unconventional medium for painting.

The paintings of Meagher has a subjective vision of an artist which incorporates with it imaginary concerns against the objective, clinical and diagnostic temper of a doctor.

“My paintings and the scan share the quality of an encultured form — one from art and the other from science. This makes me and my paintings unique in the world,” says the young doctor who spends all his time on the scan plates with colours once he is out of the hospital.

Meaghar generally exhibits his painting in art galleries or group exhibitions and has won a number of prizes for his unconventional style, including the Michelangelo Drawing Prize.

But when he was invited by Society of Nuclear Medicine India to showcase his work at Shavak Nanvati Technical Institute he could not refuse.