Art, Medicine, and the Power of First Impressions: One EMDP2 Student's Multi-Layered Vision

A future Navy physician and portrait artist, EMDP2 student Shokoufeh Shadabi brings a painter's eye for observation to military medicine.

Miniature portraits of Uniformed Services University facility dogs Kelly, Shetland, and Grover, left to right, painted by Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Shokoufeh Shadabi for a future campus exhibition; Kelly and Grover are active-duty facility companions and Shetland is a retired campus icon. (Photo courtesy of Shokoufeh Shadabi)

July 30, 2026 by Hadiyah Brendel

Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Shokoufeh Shadabi, an Enlisted to Medical Degree Preparatory Program (EMDP2) student at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), approaches medicine much as she approaches portraiture: as a process of careful observation, curiosity, and deep investigation. Shadabi recently channeled her lifelong passion for pastel and oil painting into a community project, donating a series of microminiatures celebrating USU's facility animals.

Working alongside Paula Bellini, a senior clinical associate in USU’s Department of Medicine and a handler for the university’s facility dog program, Shadabi is preparing to frame her latest miniature portraits for a future exhibition at the university. The project features USU’s active-duty furry companions, Kelly and Grover, as well as a tribute to Shetland, a retired campus icon.

Shadabi started with Grover, then met Kelly and painted them both. "I was thinking about painting Grover, then I met Kelly, so I completed the portraits of the two," she said. When Bellini mentioned that Shetland was the first facility dog on campus for students, Shadabi decided the retired dog belonged in the series too. She surprised Bellini with all three.

Shadabi with facility dogs Kelly, left, and Grover in Ms. Paula Bellini's office at USU, holding two of the miniature portraits she painted of them. (Photo courtesy of Shokoufeh Shadabi)

Each painting measures one inch by one inch on parchment paper and takes, on average, ten hours of layered detail and microscopic brushwork. For Shadabi, the patience the miniatures demand mirrors the discipline of clinical medicine, where careful observation often reveals what first impressions cannot. 

The facility dog series also marked a technical first for her. "My portraits were always black graphite and ivory neo pastel, and this was the first time I challenged myself and experimented using Rembrandt's color palette on completed black and white portraits."

Portraiture, for Shadabi, is a way of seeing rather than only a way of painting. "For me, portraiture is more than painting; it is a disciplined way of observing the human condition. It teaches attention to subtle expression, posture, and the quiet language of the eyes.” She says medicine asks the same of her: to look beyond symptoms and see the person, not only the diagnosis.

During her off-duty hours, she studies how Rembrandt painted, drawn to the honesty of his portraits and the way a face carries a life. "What I wanted to capture was specifically Grover, not just another labrador, but who I met for the first time at USU’s Medical School Open House."

The study has earned recognition. The Portrait Society of America awarded Shadabi a Veteran Scholarship for the 2026 Art of the Portrait conference and waived her registration fees; the conference ran April 9 to 12. 

The sessions centered on painting live portraits, testing her speed and accuracy and pushing her to read a person quickly. For Shadabi, that work mirrors the diagnostic setting, where a physician reads the non-verbal cues beneath a patient's composure. "If I have to summarize the conference in a sentence: A portrait fails if I only capture anatomy; it succeeds when I capture the person's emotional reality."

Her clinical work taught her the same lesson from the other direction. As a phlebotomy clinic supervisor, she learned to read posture, expression, and body language. “While those observations could never replace a diagnosis, they often reminded me that every patient carried a story before a single word was spoken." Both fields, she says, demand that you look beyond surface symptoms to find the underlying truth.

Shadabi has held a curiosity for science and art since childhood. Both her parents were scientists, she says, but they encouraged her art from the start. “It was never are you going to paint? But instead, are you going to use oils or watercolors?”

USU leadership has worked to preserve that artistic identity even as she manages the demanding schedule of EMDP2 coursework and MCAT (medical college admission test)  preparation. When she considered skipping a major art event last year to study chemistry, her mentors urged her not to set aside the artistic voice that had shaped her for years. She credits that encouragement with keeping both paths open. "Art reminds me why I chose medicine in the first place,” said Shadabi. “Science teaches me how the body works, but art continually brings me back to the individual human experience. Every portrait is more than anatomical features, just as every patient is more than a diagnosis."

She traces the opportunities back to where they started. “With all my heart, I owe these opportunities to the Arts in Health program at my previous command, Walter Reed, and to USU, where leadership has continued to encourage me to grow as both an artist and a future physician,” Shadabi said. 

Her work keeps drawing notice. Four of her military dog portraits (Dillon, Goldie, Sully, and Ellie Mae) from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) were selected for inclusion in the juried 2026 Journeys Onward Veterans Art Exhibition at the Salmagundi Club of New York, her third consecutive year at the forum. In June, her landscape painting of the WRNMMC front lawn, “Lake Eleanor,” entered the permanent U.S. Navy Art Collection at the Naval History and Heritage Command, her second work to join the collection.

"Lake Eleanor," which Shadabi first painted for the 2025 Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Arts in Health exhibition, became her second work accepted into the permanent U.S. Navy Art Collection. (Photo courtesy of Shokoufeh Shadabi)

Persistence is part of her method. "I smile now because I know that almost every painting reaches a stage where I briefly lose faith in it." she said with a laugh. "Now I remind myself to give the painting a chance. More often than not, if I stay with it, it becomes even more beautiful than I expected."

The same outlook shapes how she handles doubt in medicine. When her confidence wavers, she says, she turns to the people who believe in her. "Their encouragement doesn't replace my own belief, but it helps me rebuild it."

Shadabi, who aspires to specialize in neurosurgery or oncology, believes her work serves the community best in shared spaces, where people can live with it day to day. "One of the reasons I really love pursuing medicine is because I genuinely love people, and I hope I can contribute to their health and well-being so they can continue to enjoy beauty and life with the people they love," Shadabi said. 

Studying medicine and portraiture together, she says, has sharpened what she sees in writers like Walt Whitman and Oliver Sacks: an insistence on the dignity and story within every person. That, she says, is what draws her to military medicine. “Whether in everyday life or in a combat zone, even when caring for someone considered an enemy, a physician first sees a human being. To me, there is something profoundly sacred about that."