"Landscape, Remembrance, and Healing: Paintings by Rich Panico" Exhibit Opening and Artist's Lecture
As a medical practitioner, yogi, and artist, Rich Panico has a deep and multi-faceted understanding of the human condition. Rich’s current interest in art and medicine addresses the propensity of our species to turn the inevitable human experiences of pain and loss into suffering, which, if not understood and engaged in wisely, leads to the acquisition of co-morbid (the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient) psychiatric syndromes and complex encounters with our challenging medical system. He is currently in the process of creating paintings for his upcoming exhibit and lecture at the CED. We are invited to read the artist’s blog as the show unfolds.
Panico is an esteemed physician, yogi and artist who has successfully engaged in a complex career in Athens for over 40 years. He is currently practicing mind-body medicine part time, teaching integrative medicine to physicians, and is a non-degree graduate student in the Lamar Dodd School of Art at UGA. He is a board certified psychiatrist, the founder and former director of the Mind-Body Institute at Athens Regional Medical Center, former medical director of Advantage Behavioral Health Systems and was division chief of psychiatry at Athens Regional Medical Center for many years. He is a long time student and practitioner of classical yoga and its therapeutic applications and has taught this older interior form of yoga and meditation for three decades. His training in art was through an apprenticeship in oriental high fire ceramics and he has worked for over thirty years with indigenous clays and glaze materials, ultimately creating a large body of work inspired by Neolithic animal effigy vessels. In 2003 he taught himself to draw and paint with pastels, developing an avid interest in landscape and figurative work which complement his work in ceramics.
Circle Gallery Exhibit: March 16-April 28, 2017
Artist’s Lecture: March 23, 5pm, 123 JSB