Surgeon-turned-artist Omer Sanan stands with an overflowing portfolio in his left hand. He wears a Van Gogh sweatshirt and sets tortoiseshell bifocals on his head. On  Oct. 23, Omer Sanan shared his work and story at an “Art in the Afternoon” event at the ArtiFactory.

In 2015, Sanan moved to Iowa City with his wife to enjoy retirement closer to his daughter and grandchildren. Before that, he worked as a general surgeon in St. Paul, Minnesota, for 35 years. He carried a small sketchbook in his pocket, often sketching colleagues and his workplace.

He found surgery to be its own kind of art, but admits there wasn’t much room for creativity.

“At some level, it’s like being a mechanic,” Sanan said. “You have to figure out what [the problem] is and then you have to just fix it, and you hope that it works.”

He takes out one of his old sketchbooks from his working years and flips through it. On one page, he drew a patient he’d examined for a double mastectomy. He remembers she sang a song. On another, a visitor saying goodbye. She brought a pot of flowers. On yet another, a child’s drawing of a city, captioned “SKY DESTROYER!!!”

“I had taken my grandson with me that day,” Sanan said.

In Iowa City, he and his wife took art classes at the Senior Center to get to know other members of the community. Then, a friend encouraged him to attend the late Phil Dorothy’s life-drawing group, which met weekly. After that, he began taking watercolor classes from Jo Myers Walker.

“[Art] became part of my life. It was wonderful,” Sanan said.

His art centers mostly on landscapes and people; namely his grandchildren. Iowa City is a welcome subject of his work, too — from the various bridges over the Iowa River to an oak tree he happened to spot on his morning drive, Sanan uses the world around him as inspiration. He noted that he often returns to the intersection of North Scott Boulevard and Rochester Avenue.

“There’s a little place in the northeast corner of that intersection where they grow flowers, and there is a road to a farm,” Sanan said. “I’m still struggling with the colors.”

Sanan takes a “more relaxed” approach to drawing — in surgery, he said there is “a severe fear of drawing a long line.” Still, he finds similarities in his past and present work.

“Watercolor has a life of its own. It’s very similar to surgery,” Sanan said. “You do the work, and the body has to do the healing.”

He said art helped him see the world differently. As a surgeon, he hoped never to see an interesting case. As an artist, he searches for them.

“I think you end up absorbing more life around you,” Sanan said. “That way, the ordinary things that you learn to ignore become extraordinary.”

Sometimes, his sketches include writing. Some have poems, others have prose. He flips to a drawing he wanted to share where buildings lean toward one another. There’s the back of a man’s head as it cranes over a sketchbook, and Sanan said he included himself in this one.

At the top of the page, wobbly handwriting reads,  “Sunday, January 11th, 2015. First day of retirement in my house in Iowa City. A tiny bit of paperwork, then live a new life.”