One Leaf, One Life blend of botanical art, memoir, science, and spiritual reflection, built around your pencil portraits and the essays they awaken in you. What inspired you to share your work with readers? 

Communication became an instrument of healing. Helping the suffering helped heal myself. My art came spontaneously as a natural language for expressing reverence and gratitude to others and to life.

You spent decades as a physician before becoming a serious colored pencil artist. How did your medical career shape the way you observe the natural world?

The loss of an eye in childhood taught me to look inside to see outside. Then, I developed my own system for heightened perception: “Sight & Insight” applied to medicine, to the art of surgery and to imbibe from the miracle of Nature. As a teenager, I lived in the world of insects. Then, as extension of natural curiosity I discovered the wealth and depth of my own language: Spanish, and of other languages starting with Quechua, the vernacular of the central Andean region, and by practical necessity, English. 

The story of your grandson presenting a leaf and calling it “a rainbow” is especially moving. What did that moment reveal to you about wonder and perception?

Yes, it showed me the immense capacity we all have, perhaps more in childhood, to allow ourselves the magic of awe and discovery. Perception is a universal gift at the physical, intellectual and emotional level- so often waisted. 

What is one thing you hope readers take away from One Leaf, One Life?

To create a space to find perspectives as varied and ample as imagination may provide. To construct a refuge of curiosity and transcendence that allows the readers to soar without limitation. To create art not as a privilege of few but as a right to everybody to convert life itself into a work of art. To become a missionary of calm, gratitude and inner peace. Finally and fundamentally, to discover the enigma of being yourself.

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