Ophthalmologist puts mind and hand to art

Carmel Mercado ’09 describes herself as “existing at the intersection of health and art.” A Seattle-based pediatric ophthalmologist, Mercado is also a visual artist whose whimsical illustrations and colorful animal characters can be found in places as varied as a children’s hospital and a microbrewery.

Looking back, Mercado says that even as a premed biology major at MIT she was pursuing both paths. She took a First-Year Advising Seminar in the arts and found a mentor in Michèle Oshima, then director of student and artist-in-residence programs at MIT’s Office of the Arts, who encouraged her to apply for the MIT Arts Scholars program. That gave her the opportunity to showcase her work in a gallery at MIT.

Mercado’s next stop was medical school at Johns Hopkins (she graduated in 2014). There, too, she gravitated toward opportunities for artistic expression, such as designing T-shirts and posters for an event welcoming prospective students. “That kind of helped me get through some darker days when I was really tired or really overwhelmed by the medical part of it,” she says. 

She chose ophthalmology as her specialty in part because she found the eye itself visually appealing. “The first time I saw the fundus, the retina, the back of the eye, it was so beautiful to me,” she says. “Just looking at the optic nerve, the colors, the placement, I thought about how amazing it is that we can get such beautiful and complex imagery of our world from what looks to most people like a blob of jelly.”

Initially, Mercado assumed art would take a backseat to her medical career, but time in Japan—including a MISTI summer internship in Kobe—led her to realize she had other options. She connected with a mentor, Kenji Watanabe, while studying the history of medicine at Keio University in Tokyo during medical school. Watanabe “showed me a very different lifestyle,” she says: He didn’t limit his work to academia. “He had this really cool niche where he could do all this policy work. He was traveling to different countries to meet up with other physicians. It was eye-opening,” Mercado says. “He made me realize you can shape your career and your life to be able to pursue your passions. You shouldn’t just accept the traditional way. Being exposed to that early on probably gave me the courage to do what I’m doing now.”

As a practicing ophthalmologist, she began to involve art in her work by designing patient materials featuring characters she created. Colleagues noticed and offered her commissions. About four years ago, Mercado decided to pursue art full-time. The problem: She wasn’t sure how to promote herself. “I just about tried everything to see what would stick,” she says. She started an Etsy page and social media accounts, and she applied to art shows, art walks, and galleries. After about a year, her efforts paid off, and she started to get invitations for projects.

She has since exhibited her work in juried shows and galleries in the Boston, Orlando, and Seattle areas and has received commissions for public art from several cities in Washington. She even has a piece in the permanent gallery at Japan’s Sobana Museum.

Despite her artistic success, Mercado says she eventually missed the problem-solving and patient care involved in clinical work. She started tinkering with her schedule and settled on a roughly 60-40 split in favor of medicine. 

In addition to seeing patients, she continues to pursue art projects, working mostly with acrylics and mixed media on canvas and with digital illustration; her style reflects her experiences with children and her observations of wildlife and folk art around the world, especially in Japan. 

“I’ve found a space where I’m happy,” she says, “and where it feels a little bit more balanced for me.”