As featured in San Diego Magazine, Dr.
Wahl is surrounded by his glass art.
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Doctor-Artist
Keith Jay Wahl |
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"I
can look at something with my eye, transmit it through my brain into my
hand and thus replicate virtually any form."
In his workaday world, Keith Jay Wahl rebuilds faces ravaged by disease, age or physical imperfection. The 38-year-old plastic surgeon, a graduate of UCLA Medical School, is the chairman of Sharp Memorial Hospital's head and neck surgery department. In his other life as an artist and sculptor, Wahl carves intricate designs into panes of glass. He has produced more than 100 glass etchings, including a 20-by-40-inch tiger face he hopes to present to the San Diego Zoo. "In
cosmetic surgery especially, the goal is to beautify and being an
artist certainly helps."
Is this a classic case study of a divided soul whose left brain lobe battles to dominate his right, who jumps back and forth between art and science? Wahl doesn't think so.
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He insists the distinction between his two lives is growing hazier all the time: "In cosmetic surgery especially, the goal is to beautify and being an artist certainly helps. A back ground in art helps you pay more attention to detail, precision and planning—all qualities equally important in plastic surgery." Wahl studied art throughout junior and senior high schools, both in the classroom and with private tutors; he even attended Samsels Art School in North Hollywood for awhile. He recommends some sort of training in art and sculpture for all plastic surgeons "because it's known that many surgeons who enter such programs just don't have it in their hands. That's why it is not uncommon for dentists to go into plastic surgery, simply because they have the highly tuned hand-eye coordination of a jeweler," Wahl says. "With my background in art, I can draw almost anything and all that means is I can look at something with my eye, transmit it through my brain into my hand, and thus replicate virtually any form. And that, too, is really the essence of plastic surgery." • —Thomas K. Arnold, San Diego Magazine
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