Dr. Jordi Rowe: Where Medicine Meets Art
By Rebecca Meiser
In Dr. Jordi Rowe’s world, science and creativity are not separate paths—they intertwine. Step into her office, and you immediately sense it: there are no college or medical degrees on the walls. “They’re in a pile on the floor,” she laughs, her voice as cheery as her bright yellow shirt.
Instead, her walls overflow with art—her own and that of her friends. There’s a poster from her solo show It Tastes Like Cotton Candy at Waterloo Arts, an abstract painting of a face with sliding eyes by her former instructor Mike Meier, a whimsical poodle portrait by her friend Frank Hadzima, and a framed photo of bottles filled with urine, “which I think is the funniest thing,” she says. It’s a reflection of her life: rigorous medicine and boundless art, coexistence rather than compromise.
Growing up in Calgary, nestled in the Canadian Rockies, Rowe was drawn to art early. Both her grandmothers were artists. “I just remember sitting at our kitchen table drawing with one of them, and said I wanted to do this,” she says. She even won awards in junior high—but in her family, a career in art “was not what people expected you to do,” she says. Her mother, who became a child psychologist when Rowe was in middle school, shaped her understanding of care and empathy, but also taught her that life can pivot unexpectedly. When Rowe was in tenth grade, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She passed away during Rowe’s second year of university, leaving a final request: that Rowe pursue medicine.
Flying back to school after her mother’s death, Rowe says, “I couldn’t stop sobbing. In those moments, you lose things that are bigger than you. I lost my belief in religion. I lost my connection to my family because I was in school and they lived far away. I lost the hierarchy of women in my family. I think what happens is you end up connecting more to nature, because if you’ve given up on God, you better pick up something else.”
East Slope Sunrise, an oil painting, asks viewers to pause—a moment of stillness from an artist who spends her days in the urgency of diagnosis.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Jordi Rowe
Rowe honored her mother’s wish, becoming a pathologist at the Cleveland Clinic in 2007, where she specialized in breast pathology. “I found I was really good at it,” she says. “I don’t know if it was because I had a vested interest or if it’s just one of those things you’re naturally good at.”
Yet Rowe never abandoned art. It became an escape from the pressures of medicine. She took classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, studying Chinese brushwork. Surrounded by retirees, she realized: “I don’t want to be a retiree and then get to do the art. I want to do the art before that happens.”
So, like her mother, she made a mid-career pivot. In 2018, a friend’s child, Maeve Billings, was applying to the Cleveland Institute of Art, which prompted Rowe to ask, “Do you think my art’s good enough?” She applied—and was accepted. Some friends suggested painting on the side instead of going all in on a degree, but Rowe was adamant: “I was like, no, I’ve been just painting for quite some time, and it comes and goes, it waxes and wanes. I wanted to actually paint, to know where I fit in the lineage of painting, to learn more about art history, and to be part of a community.”
She knew she could handle the workload. “If I could be a part-time physician, I could be a full-time student. I knew that if I could get through medical school, I could get through art school.” Conveniently, CIA was just five minutes from the Clinic. She balanced three-quarters time at work with full-time study. Colleagues would ask, “‘How’s your hobby going?’” She’d think, It’s an entire undergraduate degree, actually.
In art school, she kept her identity under wraps. “I didn’t want anyone to know I was Dr. Rowe, because I wanted critiques to be fair. I needed to learn from my peers without that shifting the balance. I hadn’t been in a formal art class since ninth grade, so I came in knowing nothing.” She explored oils, acrylics, spray paint, and ultimately developed a voice as an abstract painter. Influences range from Pat Steir and John Cage to Gerhard Richter. Her themes reflect the sublime, the vastness of human experience, and the play of light in our environments.
In “Winter Lodge Pole Pines,” Rowe layers oil, acrylic, and spray paint to capture the quiet vastness of nature she’s always returned to.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Jordi Rowe
Her painting is unprecious. “That’s so different from what I do at work,” she says. “In pathology, there’s no room for error. If your diagnosis is incorrect, your surgery is incorrect, your treatment is incorrect—everything dominoes from there. There’s a huge responsibility to get it right. Painting is the opposite. There are no mistakes. They tell you, ‘You should paint thick over thin,’ or ‘Never mix oil and acrylic.’ I don’t listen to that. Painting is freeing. What others call mistakes, I call fun. Spray paint over watercolor? Sure. Mix oil and acrylic? Absolutely.”
Her themes are equally expansive. “We are small in a huge world,” she says. “We experience it all in different ways. For me, it’s gorgeous and beautiful to be here. I want everyone to be happy—but I also recognize the terror, the lurking darkness. That tension—the joy and the fear—that’s what drives my work.”
She graduated in 2023, embracing her full identity: “I got to wear my doctoral robes, and I didn’t want to hide anymore, didn’t want to ignore that other half of me.” Since then, her work has been widely exhibited—in the CAN Triennial in Cleveland, solo shows at Waterloo Arts Gallery, the Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls, and Studio M at the Massillon Museum—and spans everything from moody, gloaming-inspired oils and pastels to playful, pink-hued pieces.”
My first hope,” she says, “is that people look at it and think, ‘This is gorgeous.’ Something juicy that makes them want to just stop and be present for a moment. I want them to slow down, take a breath, and spend a little time with it. Just to look at a piece of art is to look a little inside yourself every time.”
She experiments with chance—letting paintings dry in the rain, exploring spontaneity—and collaborates with Maeve in a shared studio, JXM. Their first pilot show was a success; the second, Dangerous Beauty, on December 12th, will feature their own work, alongside guest artist Nikki Woods, who also serves as Director of Exhibitions + Galleries at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
“Red Bellied Piranha,” captures Rowe’s fascination with the sublime—where the beautiful and the threatening coexist.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Jordi Rowe
For Rowe, painting isn’t just creative—it’s restorative. “Diagnosing cancer every day can burn you out, especially cancers like the ones I’ve experienced in my own family. Painting is rejuvenating. When I create, I give something back. Diagnosing takes something from people, but creating gives. It balances my interior soul.”
