By Rachel Beckman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 6, 2006; C01

Plastic surgeon Eric Finzi has no control over his injections. He gave up the idea of perfection long ago, so now he is satisfied with disfiguration. Sometimes a patient's mouth ends up near her neck (whoops!), an eyebrow sneaks across her forehead (oh well!) or an eye slides right down to her chin (sorry 'bout that!).

This is when he's painting, of course. He's much more exact on real people. Finzi, 49, is both a plastic surgeon and an artist -- and he unites the two disciplines by using hypodermic needles instead of paintbrushes.

"Basically I use syringes, needles and knives constantly, so for me it didn't take much impetus to try," he says. "It made a lot of sense."

Finzi is adept at mixing left- and right-brain pursuits, splitting his time between his Chevy Chase practice and his Kensington art studio.

"I use both sides in everything I do because it's more fun," he says. "Why not?" This translates to the way he takes pride in drawing the contour maps on patients' bodies before he does liposuction, and the way he uses his background in biology and chemistry to create art.

Finzi has a solo show at Heineman Myers Contemporary Art in Bethesda that's inspired by Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." He created the 29 pieces on view through a process that includes spilling, blowtorching and injecting epoxy resin (the stuff that surfboards are made of) onto wood, metal or canvas. Other paintings from the series are on display this summer at Aidan Savoy Gallery in New York and at Clair Obscur Gallery in Los Angeles.

Finzi started painting at 13, but never lost his interest in science. He studied biology and fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania. In his medical practice, he specializes in Botox, fat transfers and liposuction. He says he was drawn to the field because it gives him the chance to use his artistic eye.

"My sculptures are walking around all the time," he says. "I do a lot of living sculpture, but only they know it. But I do look at it that way."

Finzi performs "time and temperature trials" to determine what will happen when the resin is, say, heated to 80 degrees instead of 60. Still, the material, which can take days to dry, is almost impossible to control.

"Sometimes I paint something and I come in the next morning and say, 'Eureka! It worked!' " he says. "There's that element of surprise, because the paint does half the painting." But he also has to throw away about a third of his work.

The two-panel, 5-by-7-foot painting "Looking Glass" shows a huge Alice (she's already dined on the "Eat Me" cake) crunched into a house. Finzi had to paint the upper and lower panels separately and climb a ladder to get proper perspective. Alice's blond hair looks goopy and tangled because he poured such hot resin to create it.

In another painting in the Carroll series, the resin kept moving for 12 hours after Finzi had left the studio, so Alice's face is smeared down and to the left.

"She's almost completely obliterated, but if you get back, she's gazing at you," he says.

In May, Finzi received national media attention for a small-scale study he did in which he found that injecting Botox into frown lines helps alleviate depression. His idea for the study sprang from another art exhibition that he created, based on photographs of women in a psychiatric ward in 1880s Paris.

"Looking at these pictures, I was fascinated by their expressions," he says. "There were these incredible frowns on the psych ward. From across the room, you can tell that the person is in psychic pain." He started hypothesizing that maybe facial expression influences mood just as mood influences facial expression.

His worlds collide on the walls of his medical office, where about a dozen paintings hang. One of his abstract pieces adorns the cover of a brochure advertising his plastic surgery services.

Finzi made the psych-ward series and the "Alice in Wonderland" series at the same time. He usually bases his paintings on photographs or film stills. He used to do color sketches before he started painting, but realized they are useless because the resin does whatever it wants.

"I consider my paintings to be a movie," he says. "I'm the director and the resin is the principal actor. It's a joint venture."

It's also a dangerous venture: Resin fumes are toxic. To make sure he doesn't inhale any, Finzi wears a yellow "spacesuit" with a breathing tube while he paints. He also outfitted his art studio with an industrial ventilation system.

"If you're in there for a long time," he says, "it's a good way of slowly committing suicide."

Through the Looking Glass: Reflections on Lewis Carroll's Untold Stories, through Aug. 5 at Heineman Myers Contemporary Art, 4728 Hampden Lane, Bethesda. Tuesday-Saturday noon-6 p.m. and by appointment. Free. 301-951-7900.