Now that lockdown measures are being eased, there is hope of a return to surgical operations recently cancelled due to the intense need of hospital resources and staff covering the pandemic.

My image shows an operation taken from a recent BBC News item. This is the source image, photographed from the TV.

Operation – Source image
BBC News 10:15pm

As ever, I was so struck by the intense atmosphere and also the characters revealed by what is the smallest glimpse of their features.

The other striking element for me is the light we can see here. I can’t help myself, I see the light found in paintings by Caravaggio and Rembrandt, the intensity of colour and feeling, resonates from hundreds of years ago to the present day.

See the features on the faces to the top right in this painting by Caravaggio; only the top of the heads are in light, showing eyes and noses, just as the masks do with the surgeons.

The Taking of Christ
Caravaggio, 1602
National Gallery of Ireland

Here are my efforts in oil pastel, ink and water colour, a long way off the beauty of the photo and certainly the painting! Maybe the photo says it best here? I will let you decide.

Operation #1
Oil pastel and watercolour study
16cm x 16cm (approx)
Operation #2
Oil pastel and watercolour study
16cm x 16cm (approx)

2 responses to “Hospital – 3”

  1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

    I like the last one best. I’d say it was better than the photo. 😊 Is it all watercolour?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Maxine Dodd - Art Avatar

      Hi Mike, lovely to hear from you, glad you are keeping well. Yes, the last one is my favourite too, (I think!) and you are right, it is all watercolour with pen and ink. Best wishes, Maxine 😊

      Liked by 1 person

Share your thoughts…

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: