Dick Saunders worked almost 30 years as a physician at Dartmouth- Hitchcock Medical Center. He was chairman of the department of neurosurgery from 1981 until his retirement in 1997. The following is an edited interview.
Art was never a part of my life. Growing up, I rather liked to draw, but I was always frustrated by the tricks of perspective, and I was busy enough that I neglected that part of my life.
I became interested in sculpture only by taking a class several years ago. I actually didn’t do it out of any artistic avocation, or even interest. I was simply curious about how you could carve stone - the simple mechanics of how it could be done.
As it turns out, it’s not all that hard. And discovering that, I discovered part of me I didn’t know.
I was a neurosurgeon, but not anymore. I don’t usually introduce myself that way. I’ve never been a starving artist. I’m not driven by the need to make a buck. And when you factor out the need to make a living, you have the luxury to be a real dilettante. You can do it when you feel like it, and you don’t have to please anybody.
The perverse side of it is that you’re put in a position of selling your “children” by choice. You don’t really need the money, but you do need the ego kick of somebody other than your mother saying, “Hey, that isn’t bad.”
To rationalize it, you put a ridiculous price on the things and expose yourself to humiliation. If nobody buys it, that tells you something. But the remarkable thing is that some people will think they are worth that. It’s a great compliment.
I seem to do a lot of animals. I don’t think that’s necessarily my preferred subject, it’s just that they seem to come out better. I’ve done a few torsos, and a judge once said to me that I ought to stick with my animals.
The very first piece that I did was pedestrian, but I knew I was captured. It’s an indescribable feeling being in the midst of art. To suddenly find yourself in the presence of beauty, and to be able to create it, perhaps, in the minds of a few people, that’s the excitement of it all.
Sculpture has been my access to the joy of art, to the contentment of beauty. It is now part of me. It’s one of those lucky stumbles in life, and I’ve never been happier.