Ronald Mathias talks to us about his field of medical illustration: the art of taking complex medical procedures, descriptions, or concepts and turning them into something visual for ease of understanding. He spends most of his time translating traumatic injuries and building empathy for the pain someone has suffered into a visual medium for litigation.
He is also tasked with the extremely difficult job of taking unseen symptoms and turning them into visual representations. To illustrate this, Ronald uses the golden ratio, which uses geometry and mathematics to show movement through pictures to create empathy.
For the cover of the book Superhero Grief, Ron designed the cover to help the reader understand the transformation that even superheroes go through. Every person, superhero or not, goes through grief at some point in their lives. Each person has to leave something behind to transform into the new person that they will become. Superheroes are imperfect like us, and they can have trouble moving on from the trauma they have endured.
Mentioned in the episode:
The Painter's Secret Geometry: A Study of Composition in Art by Charles Bouleau
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
The Golden Rule Technique Visual
Root Phi Golden Spiral
Painter's Pattern Root 2
About Ronald Mathias
Ronald L. Mathias, CMI, has been immersed in medical media production and visual translation for over twenty-five years. During that time, he has created thousands of innovative demonstrative aids for personal injury, medical malpractice, and product liability cases for plaintiff and defendant attorneys across the US. He also provides artwork for medical textbooks, journals, medical device advertising, comic books, and storyboarding for film.
Ron has lectured on the practical use of demonstrative evidence at Temple University, St. John’s University, New Jersey Association for Justice, the New York State Trial Lawyer’s Institute, and many local Bar Associations. Previously, he taught Biomedical Art & Visualization at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. One of his passions is teaching the fundamentals of art, particularly phi ratio design theory, to evoke specific emotional responses from the viewer.
He is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology’s Medical Illustration program and maintains board certification from the Association of Medical Illustrators. Ron founded the studio Anatomical Justice, LLC, in Nazareth, PA, in 1999.
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