THE MORNING AFTER | Megan Gerber

“Light took on new meaning for me during my medical residency. I spent so much time away from natural light, often working through the night. The end of long, exhausting nights on call was always marked by the slow trickle of new dawn light bringing both respite and hope.

As an abstract painter, I do not set out to represent form or discrete objects, however, my paintings often look like landscapes, despite not being based on any known physical topography; for this reason I call them “emotional landscapes.” This term is also commonly used to describe the dominant emotions of an individual, a group or even society.

The peak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 often felt like a long, exhausting, fearful night to me. I painted “The Morning After” thinking about what it would feel like to have COVID behind us. I pictured the trickle of morning light bringing relief, healing and hope.”

Megan Gerber is a general internist who recently joined the faculty of Albany Medical College, Albany, NY. Her clinical and academic work focuses on improving both health outcomes and the healthcare experience for persons who have experienced trauma. For the last several years, she has worked to find novel ways to integrate narrative medicine into this work. Dr. Gerber is an abstract painter whose paintings and mixed media pieces focus on expression of “emotional landscape,” her visual and written work has appeared in the Journal of General Medicine and Closler.org. She is the editor of “Trauma-informed Healthcare Approaches: A Guide for Primary Care” (Springer, 2019).

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