Tree of Life 4, 2024, handcut collage on paper, 12 x 12"

Kristin Anchors is an emergency medicine doctor in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Before medical school she studied life sciences and philosophy. The scientific advances that underlie her medical practice have also occasioned a split among body, mind and spirit, their historic unity and crucial interconnectedness.

She is also an analog collage artist, intricately cutting and combining images from outdated textbooks to illustrate the interconnectedness of all things and reuniting her own body, mind and spirit that had become disconnected during the long hours and years of residency and hospital practice. It also brought back the art practice of her childhood.

Seen, 2024, hand-cut collage on paper, 12 x 12"

She wondered how she might repurpose the text-books and began cutting and combining images onto blank pages torn from her childhood drawing pads.

I first saw her work in an exhibition at Folklore in Santa Fe, a gallery whose owner, Kelly Dye, describes as “a peaceful space for healing. We exist to tell stories and facilitate connection in many forms. Our aim is to inspire the discovery of beauty, remembrance of the self, respect for the earth, and care for community.” A fitting place for Anchors’ finely handcrafted, inspired work.

Self-Portrait, 2018, handcut collage on paper, 12 x 8"

When I think of inspiration, I think of its etymology, its origin in the past participle inspiratus of the Latin verb inspirare, “to breathe into.” For centuries it has meant “to draw into the lungs” from which oxygen is distributed throughout the body. The word ruach in the Hebrew Bible has multiple meanings from wind to breath to spirit—the creative breath of God or the life spirit of all creation throughout time.