My paintings explore a visual world often concealed from the average person. Stemming from a background in anatomy, surgery and social anthropology, my works explore the unknown.

Pre-covid I was shadowing surgeons in and out of the operating theatre, to produce works on surgery. This past year, however, my approach to my subject matter had to change as my opportunities disappeared. Thankfully a residency with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Surgeon’s Hall Museum allowed me to continue my work, from a distance. I was given the chance to see the human body in a way most medical practitioners have not, on a macro scale with robotic surgery. I was inspired. Through the lens of this robotic camera, something so fundamentally ‘us’, also became something extraordinarily alien. The unseen is often intangible, abstract, yet the flesh within us is real.

Disembodied and decontextualised. I began to see similarities between these images and the mosses and lichens that I had spent so many years studying as a hobby. Similarities of function; both flesh and moss facilitate life, protect what lies beneath, regulate moisture and temperature, and prevent toxins. But also similarities of depth, tone, and textures.

My paintings are thus abstracted snapshots of reality. Distorted by scale and transforming those unseen and unperceived into something that cannot be overlooked. Mosses and lichens are vital for creating and maintaining ecosystems and bio-diversity but climate change puts them under threat. We are often faced with this dichotomy of nature and humanity, but we depend upon the natural world. If we started thinking about mosses like the flesh on our backs, would we not make it a priority to ensure we were healthy?

These paintings are thus presented as a witness statement of the unknown and unperceived, to understand our relationship to it.