Accident and an Unexpected Awakening

Jules Engel and James E George MD

In all that we do, we try to avoid accidents which almost always result in the “unwanted” and “unintentional”, a disruption in plans and the peace that comes with harmony, symmetry and resolution.  

A Master’s Lesson

However, in 1974 after graduating from medical school, I learned an important lesson about accidents, when I began post-post-graduate studies in film-graphics and documentary filmmaking at CalArts.  I was fortunate during those two wonderful years to have as one of my mentors, Jules Engel, (https://www.jules-engel.com), the brilliant and prolific modernist/abstract-impressionist painter and academy award-winning filmmaker.

Before he was selected in ’74 to be the director of CalArts experimental animation and film-graphics department, a position he held until his death, Jules had a successful career as “colorist” and animator when he worked in Hollywood designing special scenes in Disney’s Bambi and the beautiful high-contrast sequence of the dancing Amanita muscaria mushrooms in Disney’s Fantasia. After Disney, Jules became a partner at UPA where he brought his distinctive use of color, influenced by abstract painting and the work of Kandinsky, Klee, Miró, Matisse, Dufy, as well of the Bauhaus book “Language of Vision”.  In the ‘50’s, after leaving UPA, as a painter and filmmaker in Paris, Jules art-designed for Jaques Tati and chummed with other experimental filmmakers like Man Ray.

At CalArts, his advice to me as a young artist, being somewhat constricted by the rigid and conservative rules of my previous training in undergraduate biology sciences and in medical school, was that I needed to give myself permission to “play” and use mistakes and accidents as starting points in the creation of my art. 

In 1976 he made this spectacular work “Accident” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=3Gq_HLhUw3c)  to demonstrate to all of us that idea. In that wonderful filmic metaphor, Jules begins the short film with a black and white cell-cycle animation of a greyhound running.  As the film continues, the drawing is marred by a smudge that increases in size until it obliterates the greyhound image and then obliterates itself into a complete abstraction.

After CalArts, Jules and I collaborated on two of his films, Rumble and Lilac Garden, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=N4u4-0xvXzo) or (https://www.garlasalle.com/portfolios/film/) and we continued our close friendship until his passing in 2003.

An Unexpected Awakening

Many years later, in another part of the world, on the evening of June 8^th 2016,  another friend, Dr. James George, 72 years old and semi-retired as an accomplished physician, attorney, entrepreneur and philanthropist, opened the door to his home to admit a technician to do some work.  Stepping backwards, Jim tripped over a package on the floor and stumbled backwards, hitting his head against a wall.  The technician, finding Jim unconscious and apneic, called 911 and began CPR.  

The paramedics rushed Jim to the local hospital, where he also happened to be the chairman of Emergency Medicine Department.  From there, he was helicoptered to Thomas Jefferson Trauma Center where they placed a pressure bolt in his head to monitor for increased intracranial pressure.  During the unstable first few days, the neurosurgery team discovered that Jim also had a cervical spine contusion at the C2 level resulting in complete paralysis.   He emerged from his coma ten days later, drifted in and out of consciousness for a month and then, over the course of several weeks his condition improved slightly.  His quadraplegia morphed into what is known as the “Brown-Sequard Syndrome” with paralysis below the lesion on one side, and loss of pain and temperature sense on the other side below the injury.

Fortunately, with the help of family, friends and very competent medical and rehabilitative professionals, Jim summoned the will to fight, and I suspect, overcome the depression that would have likely enveloped anyone else in similar circumstances.

With no use of his dominant right arm, Jim had to learn how to function left-handed.

In his extensive rehabilitation efforts, he began to paint.

At first, the strokes he placed on paper were simple swatches of dark colors, because “everything was dark at the beginning”,  Jim said.  But he persisted, and in the course of several months, something else emerged from the process of painting abstract images.  He discovered his “eye” for color, balance and  composition. It was a subtle process.  

When I learned about Jim’s personal discovery, I remembered what I learned from my exposure to Jules Engel and his advice.  Jules was an aesthetic purist, strict and parsimoneous in his praise, all of which he reserved for a special lucky few who measured up to his rigid, well-informed opinion.   “There’s something special there” Jules said to me and sometimes would say if he sensed that a student’s work revealed nascent, emerging talent.  It was a huge compliment that every one of his students desperately sought. 

And forty five years after my introduction to Jules Engel at CalArts, three years after Jim George’s devastating, tragic accident, Jim presented to me and his other, fellow co-founders of TeamHealth, some of his first paintings.  I remember finding these two pieces in the batch that were, in my opinion, “special.”

I sensed at this time that this was not happenstance or simply the result of an exercise. Jim’s aesthetic sensitivites had been unleashed. Indeed, seeing how Jim’s work has evolved, the gorgeous abstractions with stunning juxtaposition of colors and movement, his prolific joyeous exploration of primal, abstract imagery, each painting packed with energy and focus, confirms that I was right.  There was something very special there.  And I know Jules would have approved of that compliment.

James E George MD, 2021

Although I would never have guessed it when, as Emergency Medicine physicians, we worked together for decades in the business of Medicine and Medical-Legal Patient Safety…that hidden behind all of the left-brain sagacity and wisdom he constantly provided to all of us, he was an “artist” (in the very best sense of the word) all along.  Jim George has reminded us of the joy of play and, in the very manner that my mentor Jules Engel emphasized to all of us, the importance of using accidents as the starting point to find inspiration and innovation. 

I encourage you to find Jim’s work and learn about his incredible, inspiring journey on the internet (https://doctorgeorgeart.com) as well as instagram (doctorgeorge.art) so you can appreciate just what I mean.