Madonna Walters: My work in nursing

Madonna has been painting since 1969 and has been a registered nurse since 1973. After starting college in art school at the University of Michigan in 1967, Madonna changed majors in 1970. She earned an associate’s degree in nursing from Northwestern Michigan College in 1973 (also Class President), followed by a bachelor’s in nursing from the University of Michigan and a master’s in public health from the University of Michigan. According to Madonna, “The two careers have not been emotionally incompatible. Nursing is about healing the body and mind. Art is about tapping into the spirit and soul. You can think of the hospital as a tightly controlled and structured environment whereas my art has a loose and organic sensibility. For me, art has always served as an escape valve for everything that happened during the day – the good and bad. Those worlds really mirror each other.”

This sense of the right brain/left brain division was also articulated in a Scrubs Magazine article in 2010.