What is Anatomy Awake?

The human body: we see the out­side — the color of our eyes, our hair, arms and legs, our weight, our shape (are you an apple or a pear?), the pig­ment and tex­ture of our skin. But the inside, now there’s a mystery!

In August of 1999, I began train­ing to become a reg­is­tered nurse. I stud­ied human anatomy and phys­i­ol­ogy. This opened a whole new world where I saw what lies under the skin and I began to get a glim­mer at how we are put together and how we function.

With a back­ground in Qabalah and Anthro­pos­o­phy, I see the body through lenses of spir­i­tu­al­ity liv­ing in the world. But how do I com­mu­ni­cate this rev­e­la­tion of human’s lit­er­ally being made in the image of God? PAINTING! I’ve been paint­ing since 1995 and lost inter­est in many of the com­mon sub­jects such as, land­scapes, still life, etc, but anatomy really cap­ti­vated me. Why not paint anatomy? Artists have stud­ied human struc­ture and form through­out his­tory includ­ing, Leonardo DaVinci who exhumed corpses of the recently deceased.

In addi­tion to study­ing West­ern spir­i­tual tra­di­tions, I have also stud­ied Hin­duism and Bud­dhism. I love learn­ing about indige­nous cul­tures and always find rich spir­i­tual sym­bols there. The com­bi­na­tion of anatom­i­cal research and spir­i­tual sym­bol­ogy has given me the real­iza­tion that the human body lit­er­ally is made up of spir­i­tual archetypes.

My first anatomy paint­ing, Crown of Thorns and the on-going art/healing project Anatomy Awake was thus born1. My goal is to share my vision, knowl­edge, and enthu­si­asm for human cre­ation as spir­i­tual beings, as well as cul­ti­vate a new rela­tion­ship to our­selves facil­i­tat­ing self-love and health.

My cur­rent project, full body human dis­sec­tion, allows me the oppor­tu­nity to explore the human form in the most inti­mate way. This research, cou­pled with med­i­ta­tion and paint­ing reveals incred­i­ble mys­ter­ies. The Gar­den of Eden lives in our brain, Hinduism’s cos­mic web exists in all of the con­nec­tive tis­sues, and the Chris­tos lives in our heart.

I invite you to visit my online gallery. Each paint­ing includes a descrip­tion of the sub­ject and where it lives in the body and sug­gested start­ing points for your own deeper inves­ti­ga­tion. Prints with fur­ther infor­ma­tion are also avail­able for pur­chase. I love talk­ing to peo­ple so drop me a line with your own insights, ques­tions or to sched­ule an Anatomy Awake pre­sen­ta­tion at your facility.

Deb­o­rah Finn-Romero is a mother of two, a Reg­is­tered Nurse, cer­ti­fied herbal­ist, and painter. She is cur­rently involved in human dis­sec­tion with Mar­cie Woolsey, PhD, and Jeff Changaris at Amer­i­can River Col­lege. Deb­o­rah grad­u­ated from Con­scious­ness Stud­ies with Den­nis Klo­cek in 2001.