Psychiatrist Thomas Lavie, MD, and abstract expressionist artist Willem de Kooning are both well acquainted with loss and new beginnings.
At age 22, de Kooning left his home in the Netherlands by stowing away on a ship that took him to New York City. Lavie’s departure from his native New Orleans was even more emotionally wrenching. His home, clinic and affiliated hospitals were all destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which led to his relocation to Nashville the following year.
Like de Kooning, Lavie is a painter – and his art has helped him find the courage to start over. His figurative and abstract works span a wide variety of styles and media, including oils, acrylics, house paint, ink and mixed media collage. His paintings hang in private collections coast to coast, but his “day job” is that of psychiatrist at Centerstone’s Dede Wallace Campus in Berry Hill, where he partners with a primary care physician to meet patients’ mental and physical healthcare needs.
Lavie’s life took a direct hit from Katrina. “The two hospitals where I worked never reopened,” he said, “and the clinic was outside the levee system so the water was over the roof. It was too dangerous to get into my art studio at home so I lost over 100 paintings there, plus many of the ones that hung in my house. Since then, I’ve tried to reproduce some of the lost paintings from memory, and I’ve been able to restore many of the damaged ones.”
You can see hundreds of Lavie’s works at a website called gallerynona.com (shorthand for “New Orleans/Nashville”). The site also showcases paintings by Lavie’s colleague A.J. Friedman, MD, a neurologist whose work captures the mood of post-Katrina New Orleans. “He does a lot of paintings with trees because the city lost so many of them,” said Lavie. “The salt water killed a lot of the oak trees that had been there for decades.”
On the website, Lavie notes that he was a late bloomer who didn’t start painting until after medical school. It all began with a trip to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where he first got to see abstract expressionist works by painters from the acclaimed New York School.
Since moving to Nashville, Lavie has had two solo exhibits, including one at the Tennessee Art League. Several of his pieces also grace the walls of the Dede Wallace Campus, an integrated care clinic offering a range of behavioral and primary care services.
Lavie and family chose Nashville for their new home because he had done rotations here during medical school and really liked the city. For seven years, he served as a clinician and clinical supervisor as the medical director of Vanderbilt’s Adult Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic, which also included the opportunity to teach. He still serves on the clinical faculty.
It’s not surprising that Lavie feels a strong connection with people who’ve been displaced – and he’s counseled many patients who lives were disrupted by Nashville’s devastating 2010 flood.
Lavie uses art as a therapeutic tool nearly every day. “I have several of my paintings in my Centerstone office, and patients almost universally respond to them. New patients think that I collect art, and when I tell them I painted what they’re seeing they get really excited – although about half of them think I’m joking. But that leads us into a discussion about creativity. Some psychiatric patients have confidence issues and don’t always believe in themselves. I let them know how easy it is to be creative. Many of them say ‘I can’t even draw a stick figure,’ so I’ll show them something that’s just a color field. They really respond to that, and it helps them believe in their own uniqueness.”
Although he’s sold many paintings, Lavie doesn’t chase commercial success. “It’s hard to make a living selling paintings,” he noted. “But I’d like to have a gallery representation some day in New Orleans.”
Lavie still has four siblings and many other relatives in New Orleans, and he still roots for the LSU Tigers and pro football Saints. But he’s currently making no plans to return. “Nashville is our home now, and we’re very happy here,” he said. “Our daughter is a sophomore premed student at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. And honestly, it would be very hard for us to go through anything as traumatic as that again.”
Like de Kooning on the docks of New York, Thomas Lavie knows that it’s important to treasure the past while welcoming what today has to offer.
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This is a piece about the new facilities at the Dede Wallace Campus