…..the sugar sticks to the vessels causing untold damage especially over time. The whole vascular system can be affected, from the larger arteries around the heart down to the tiny blood vessels of the feet.

Having lived with this condition for 42 years my relationship with blood is a daily encounter – I do a finger prick test about ten times a day.

I have been using my own medical imagery in my work for many years now, and have a series of ESEM (Environmental Scanning Electron Micrograph) images of my blood . I have also made microscopic images of a tiny piece of skin (from the same fingertip that drew the blood).

I have formed these ideas into illuminated transparencies, a form of looking more closely at detailed images used in medical analysis.

With the huge increase in the diabetic population in the twenty first century,
Diabetes is of major concern. This project will also provide text about the condition and its complications. I hope to contribute to educating people about this disease through beauty rather than gore, by aestheticising the viscera.

I will present a series of five or six light boxes with images either directly of or involving my blood, scaled up to 22,000% (nano scale). Using black & adds realism, while coloured elements show interpretative additions such as with Pancreas Transplantation, and a new box showing vessels bellow the skin and deep within the leg.

These can be arranged in many combinations; a pile on the floor, to be looked into and upon, contemplated, perhaps scrutinized much as a doctor looks at an ex-ray. Exhibited with text explaining diabetes and its complications, these pieces function like windows into a condition, in this case through the blood.

I offer a poetic way of seeing viscera and understanding that diabetes involves the blood and the immune system. People are not aware of type 1 and think only of obesity in relation to diabetes. I hope to contribute to educating people about this disease which is becoming so prominent in its type 2 form, but through beauty rather than gore. It is interesting that the way of the future may not be in a blood test, but daily blood testing is an essential part of maintaining the condition at present.

Biography

I have been a practiicing artist since graduating in 1982.  I have worked with different medium, and currently only work with drawing, photography, collage and sound, prefering the intimacy of working small visually, where sound work can expand into a space if desired.

The subject of my art has always been the human body. I express our experience of living with it in this world, and within particular spaces and situations. From an ongoing concern with conveying my 42 years of living with Type 1 Diabetes and its complications (affecting blood vessels and the nervous system of other organ function), I keep an ongoing dialogue between my changing condition my medical imagery, and my imagination.