Mohamed Foda, MD first learned about the principle of how to create optical geometric illusions using string art (with fine threads and nails) from a French Medical Student friend while on a summer vacation in Paris in 1973. 

 

Mohamed subsequently started to self-teach and develop his own visual Optical Geometric string Artwork during the remainder years of his medical education and his initial surgical training in Egypt (in mid and late 1970s). During that time, Mohamed held three artwork exhibitions; two at the American University and one at the French Cultural Centre in Cairo.

 

During the course of his medical education, Mohamed’s learning relied heavily on visually examining live patients and on several well-illustrated books of human anatomy, embryology, histology, … etc. He found the paintings of the late medical illustrator Frank H. Netter, MD to be very informative and artistically inspiring. Dr. Foda further appreciated the beauty of the human structures during his training and practice of the art of surgery.

Dr. Foda pursued his surgical training in four countries including Egypt, UK, Denmark and Canada. Dr. Foda holds eleven medical qualifications from Egypt, UK, USA and Canada. He earned four Specialist surgery degrees; two in General Surgery (from Egypt and UK) and two in Urology (from Canada). 

 

From 1980 to late 2020, Dr. Foda’s intense pre-occupation with his surgical career and his family life left him with very little time to continue produce more artwork. 

 

Dr. Foda is now retired and lives with his family in Coquitlam, BC where they are surrounded by abundantly inspiring natural beauty. Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused Dr. Foda to spend ample time at home. His newly found free time re-ignited his artistic passion and allowed him to re-start producing more elaborate visual artwork pieces. 

I create representational visual artwork of stylized expressions for living creatures and human-made structures. I also construct personal visual expressions of my own “abstract” ideas.

 

To design my artwork, I use sketches, line drawings, arithmetic formulas and geometric patterns. 

To construct the required visual forms, I use straight lines of threads / strings stretched between fine nails. To create perspective, I fix the nails at different levels / heights to the wooden boards that I cover with fabric material serving as background. To conceal the nails, I use paint color that matches the color of the background. Finally, I use colored threads to enhance the visual perspective. By arranging the threads tangentially, I bring out the optical illusions of curved edges.

 

Beauty is said to be “in the eyes of the beholder” when in reality, the eyes simply function as “the windows of the brain”. I attempt, through my artwork, to communicate to the audience brains, what I mentally perceive as beauty of the natural world, the human-made structures and my own imaginary abstract forms. 

 

Enjoy the perceptual beauty around and inside all of us.

 

 

M. Foda

 

fodafineart@gmail.com
drmfoda@hotmail.com