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Meet Susan McGrew, assistant professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt and painter of Tennessee landscapes (after exploring the wonders of Rome).Susan McGrew considers herself lucky, because while most people have a difficult time finding a vocation, she has three. In addition to being an energetic mother and wife, McGrew is equally dedicated to her duties as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt and her passion as a visual artist whose big, bold canvases highlight the natural beauty in and around middle Tennessee.

Born in Boston, McGrew was drawn to the arts from an early age. "I just knew that it was something I liked," she said. "I never knew that I might have a real aptitude for it. In fact, I was really fairly discouraged from it."

McGrew's easy laugh belies the intensity of someone able to juggle such diverse and demanding practices. A whiz at science and math, McGrew dabbled in art even as she went on to college and medical school.

After graduating from Northwestern University in Chicago in 1981, McGrew and her husband moved to Nashville for her pediatrics residency at Vanderbilt. She soon found that the round-the-clock challenges of life as an intern left little time for painting. Following her residency, McGrew began an all-consuming fellowship and had two children. For ten years, she didn't pick up a brush.

And then, during a tour of art galleries and museums in Italy (during the first vacation alone with her husband in years), McGrew experienced a revelation.

"We were going through the museums," she recalled. "And I realized, ‘I need to start painting again.'"

For two years she painted every single night, eventually seeking out a mentor in Nashville artist Charles Brindley. "At that time," said McGrew, "I had decided to take it as high as I could take it. I committed myself more."

Working on-call hours at her booming practice, raising her kids and pursuing her painting, McGrew was spinning. Her children began complaining about her work schedule, while she started struggling to hold on to her identity as a painter. Something had to give.

"I finally said, ‘I have to make some changes in my life so I can do the things I really want to do.'"

After a period of soul-searching, McGrew shut down her practice and accepted a less consuming position with a new autism program at Vanderbilt University. Happily, she had reached a point where one mode of work was feeding the other.

"It's not just that they [autistic children] don't talk," she said, "they don't understand language. They do understand pictures, they think in pictures. And of course I understand pictures."