GAP Australasian Dentist Sept Oct 2020

Category 128 Australasian Dentist Paul Barrington: I was 12 when I migrated from Scotland to Perth, Western Australia. Q One day you decide to be a dentist. Why? PB: Well originally, I wanted to be an artist so in high school I suggested that to my father. But he, being a pragmatic Scot, thought that was a stupid idea. Mainly because he thought that I wouldn’t make any money out of it. He suggested that I look at a career where I was making money and then I could decide to do anything I wanted like art. Q Do you think your father was correct? I think he was right. it’s more of a hobby now and I don’t depend on it for my income. I find it more enjoyable. I do a piece to please myself. If somebody else enjoys it that is icing on the cake. Q After graduating in Perth, you applied for a job in Tassie. Why Tassie? In about 1976 I came over here for a hitchhiking holiday and I basically fell in love with it because it looked very similar to my memory of Scotland and it appeared to be a nice place to come and life. After 8 months working in Hobart, I looked at a practice in Huonville which was for sale at the time. And I thought it would be nice to have and run a practice. Q What did you enjoy about it? The main thing for me was people. I enjoy working with people. In the early days there wasn’t much time to think about enjoyment because running the practice was so hectic and we had new babies on the way. It is a bit of a blur. The major issue was surviving not enjoyment. I enjoyed the countryside. Going and having a fish in the river. Q Did you enjoy walking down town and bumping into a patient? To get something from a shop you took twice as long and I like chocolate and I had to buy chocolate in different shops so people wouldn’t know how much chocolate I was eating. When my first marriage finished, I sold my practice and moved to Hobart. Initially I worked for the government and then I worked in private practice. I started doing more art. And I actually managed to sell a couple of paintings. I found that photography was my medium of choice. No canvases lying around the house and no art pieces in different stages of construction with kids in the house. Q So how has being a dentist affected your work? I find art is my means of relaxation. I have always displayed the art where I have worked. Q Has your interest in art affected the quality of your dentistry and the work you’ve done? I don’t think so. Q Do you think your art would you be different if you’d been a full-time artist compare to having art as a hobby? Oh yes. I reckon that would be the opportunity to learn how to draw properly and develop skills that I don’t have at the moment. Like learning about composition and the differences in colour and light. If I had 30 years of being an artist then many different forms of art might have come into play. I might have been a better artist. I managed to have an exhibition in New York and I went over there to see the exhibition and also to enjoy the city. I stayed near Central Park and yeah it was an amazing experience. Even though I didn’t actually manage to sell any of the artwork. But it was really great to be there. I did manage to have a couple of exhibitions in Tasmania. I did actually really enjoy the buzz of exhibiting. Art was really good to have as a hobby. I never had the need to sell my work. It wasn’t about earning an income from it. It was definitely something that helped me through certain stages of my life. Q People all had an opinion of your art? When someone bought the art I was definitely very, very happy and impressed that they thought that my work was good. I did actually see my work in some areas in Hobart which was nice as well. Q Retirement? About fourteen years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. About four years ago my prostate cancer started spreading. I decided to retire from dentistry. Because I was working as an assistant, I was able to walk in with a medical certificate and then walk out retired. I think I was ready to retire. I have been working for 34 years in about five different practices. Q Do you have a goal with each work of art? I think the aimwith each picture is always slightly different. You have new ideas as you grow and you see new things. Your new pictures really are an example of what you are seeing day by day. I think that everyone sees a picture differently. I think the aim of an artist is to express an emotion or show joy or beauty they might not have seen without the artist. Q What is the aim of a dentist? I think the aim of the dentist is to ensure that the patient is always better after they leave than when they came in. Q How would you like to be remembered? I think the main thing that I’d like to be remembered for is someone who did really good work and was interested in the individual patient. I find that I’m meeting people who were my patients in the past who are still asking me what I’m up to. That indicates I had a really good career in dentistry. u Dr Alan Carlton is back with new column My aim in this column is to understand the dental community. I want every section of the dental community illuminated. Everybody has a story to tell. Everybody has a story worth hearing. The full complement Paul Barrington Sea sponge