Take a moment to look and wonder: what’s going on in this picture? (This is the first question of the Visual Thinking Strategies [VTS] method; to learn more about VTS, go to vtshome.org.)

Dr. Jeff Millstein, Penn Medicine

I see discovery of a boundary that really isn’t.

Dr. Vivian De Jesus, Johns Hopkins Medicine

The mind (the head of the person) wandering into the unknown (darker and mystical aspect of the picture), while not losing connection with tangible reality (body in daylight). Could this be the manifestation of curiosity?

Dr. Anna LaVigne, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Dark/light, day/night, interior/exterior; all conveyed through color, bold lines, and compartmentalization of the image. Find myself wavering between sense of a desire to explore versus to escape when pausing on the figure specifically.

Dr. Eric Last

I see it as crossing over from this world to the next.

Dr. Kamna Balhara, Johns Hopkins Medicine

A change of seasons. An escape. A reprieve?

Dr. Megan Gerber

A woman breaking a boundary or making a discovery! Love being asked to think this way.

She’s crossing into a darker aspect of the sphere – uncertainty? A travail of some kind?

Dr. Margaret Chisolm, Johns Hopkins Medicine

I’m seeing a “liminal space.”

Dr. Richard Schaefer, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Heading into a new day with positivity. But first, turning around and saying goodbye to yesterday’s hard day.

Dr. Colleen Christmas, Johns Hopkins Medicine

The image is bright on the right and fades into darker tones to the left. There are white dots like snow and snow crystals on the left with a sharp demarcation of the snowy place from the other. There is a village on the right the figure is crawling away from, holding a cane, suggesting the debility. The figure is looking up, suggesting maybe he or she is not sad to have made it through.

Margot Kelly-Hedrick, medical student, Duke University

I wonder if it is dawn or dusk?

Dr. Daniel Thomas, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Lithographic style, reminds me of medieval wood block prints depicting ancient conceptions of universe, this man piercing the “dome” to reveal hidden reality. It makes me think of Galileo, “The Truman Show,” and Plato’s Cave.

The idea of living in what you perceive to be real but literally is a world with painted sky constructed by others. Man in artwork leaves town/society and pursues solitary path of enlightenment, successfully pierces the dome.

Dr. Scott Wright, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Both the sun and the moon look to be bored and not especially happy. The tree stands out as looking particularly sturdy, healthy, and grand.

Dr. Andrea Fava, Johns Hopkins Medicine

The painting seems about Dante transitioning from the garden of Eden at the top of purgatory into heaven. Dante’s heaven has nine spheres, one being Mars where the lights of the souls form a Greek cross. But perhaps I am going toooo far!

Dr. Ambereen Mehta, Johns Hopkins Medicine

I see a person reaching desperately for something more, something unknown and dark, but possibly beautiful. Beyond the safety of the smiling safety of light.