Maxine Dodd

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.

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.

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.