Three oncologists | Ken Currie | 2002
Three oncologists | Ken Currie | 2002
In the blog, I post many artists I don’t know and, in general, I don’t like most of them. But Ken Currie was a great surprise.
Odd as it sounds, this Scottish artist is concerned on how the human body is affected by illness, aging and wounds. So his painting is focused on the portrayal of affected patients, old people, lesions and, many times, in important figures of science, such as physicians or physicists.
In Three oncologists, Currie portraits professors RJ Steele, Sir Alfred Cuschieri and Sir David Lane; all of them part of the staff of the Department of Surgery and Molecular Oncology of the Ninewells Hospital. The painting seems to surprise all three of them in the middle of their tasks, dressed accordingly. We see that Professor Steele has blood on his hands and that Professor Cuschieri is holding a medical implement. Their faces appear melancholic, tired and white as ghosts. And, on the contrary of the noble, romantic and triumphant image of a physician, the three are exhausted. But maybe this is Currie’s intention: to portray the commitment and the effort of the professionals struggling with a disease as difficult as cancer.
