The Road Autumn 2021

THE HERITAGE ARTIST
ALUMNI STORY
I was born and bred in Ballarat and attended Damascus College
from 2000 to 2005. I have fond memories of painting and drawing
in the art room at the Mount Clear campus under the fine tutelage of
Sharen Wolfe.
locum psychiatry registrar at various hospitals around Australia to
pay the bills.
All of my siblings have gone to Damascus: Adam went from 1998
to 2003; Ned attended from 2008 to 2013; Brandon is currently in
Year 9 and Abbey is in Year 11.
I initially wanted to study medicine after graduating in 2005 but
did not get in, so I moved to Melbourne and completed a Bachelor
of Biomedical Sciences at Monash University. I persisted and the
hard work paid off when I got accepted into Medicine at Deakin
University.
After graduating in 2012, I returned to Ballarat and completed my
internship at Ballarat Health Services in 2013. I was interested in
surgery and completed an Advanced Diploma in Surgical Anatomy,
which ironically, has allowed me to draw and paint the structure of
the human body more easily.
I soon realised that surgery was not for me and I moved to Sydney
for a sea change. I decided to pursue psychiatry and got accepted
into the Psychiatry training program; I started working as a
psychiatry registrar across hospitals in the city, including the Royal
Prince Alfred Hospital, where I completed a Masters of Medicine
(Psychiatry).
Over the years, my passion for art never really left, but for some
reason, I started to paint and draw more and more during my
psychiatry training. I ended up holding a solo exhibition in Glebe,
a suburb of Sydney, in 2018. The exhibition went quite well and it
gave me the confidence to pursue art more seriously.
I then decided to enrol at the Julian Ashton Art School and attended
evening classes after work. It got to the point where I tried to go to
art classes every night after work and on the weekends, I loved it so
much! Julian Ashton specialises in classical drawing and painting
techniques, something that I particularly enjoy and wanted to
nurture in my own work.
After thinking over it for a significant amount of time, I decided to
take a break from doctoring to attend art school full-time. It was an
amazing experience, but after 8 months, the COVID-19 pandemic
reared its ugly head, shutting down the art school. It left me a little
demoralised and unsure of my next step, so I decided to work as a
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