For many years, the large and inspiring piece of art titled "Fog, Ocean and Wind" greeted guests entering the Davis home of an early pioneer in oncology. Now, the painting, created in 1956 by renowned abstract artist Balcomb Greene, welcomes cancer patients coming for treatment at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“It is thrilling to see the painting he loved in a place he loved. My husband was an early advocate of the cancer center,” said Carla F. Andrews, wife of the late UC Davis oncologist Neil C. Andrews, who died just shy of the age of 100 in 2015. “It's an amazing building and the 'comprehensive' status the cancer center has received from the National Cancer Institute is equally impressive,” she added.
The painting was to go to UC Davis upon Carla Andrews' passing but, still healthy, she decided to make sure it was settled in its new home while she was here to see it.
Cancer center Director Primo "Lucky" Lara, Jr. expressed gratitude for the generous bequest, “The exquisite painting adds a great deal to our growing art collection at the cancer center, much of it donated by people such as Neil and Carla Andrews who wanted to share art that they knew would bring beauty to the cancer center while giving patients hope and strength to face their cancer.”
In 1966, Neil Andrews was in Denmark attending a global meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians when, his wife recalled, he spotted the painting during a visit to the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen. She said he fell in love with the contemporary artwork.
At the time, the 40-by-50-inch painting of waves crashing on a rugged shoreline was on loan from the Saidenberg Gallery in New York City as part of a worldwide tour to exhibit the work of American artists.
“Mr. Greene set up a studio in a village at the east end of the Long Island peninsula near the 1796 Montauk Point Lighthouse. We think the strong Atlantic surf inspired this painting and many of his other works,” Carla Andrews said.
Her husband, who was practicing in Columbus, Ohio, at the time, tracked the painting to the New York City gallery in 1968 and quickly purchased it. Not long after, he brought the painting to California after he joined the faculty of the then-new UC Davis School of Medicine in 1970.
A year later, Ronald Reagan, governor of California at the time, appointed him to the Governor’s Cancer Advisory Council. Neil Andrews’ leader ship positions also included serving as chair of the UC Davis Division of Community and Post-Graduate Medicine, and as a founding member of both the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
You can find “Fog, Ocean and Wind” in the lobby of the second floor of the cancer center’s south building.
