Tuesday 8 February 2011

Stop the Operation!


Stop That Bleeding! Whenever you encounter massive bleeding, the first thing to remember is its not your blood.' This is one of many unexpected phrases I found within a medical book on traumatic surgery. The book is geared towards teaching the surgeon to deal with intense and unpredictable situations.  They are encountering multiple wounds, a lot of blood, hidden ruptures.. all at once with little time to spare, while mobilizing the team and formulated decisions to be put into action. The surprises come with the  writing style in the medical journal here - I am imagining most of you, like me do not read surgical textbooks all that often..
'Bleeding control is not about mastering some cool moves'.
'Don't fiddle - be a rock.'


‘Opening Pandora’s Box: Think twice (and possibly three times) before deciding to mobilize the liver in a patient with thoraco-abdominal injury. You may be blowing the lid off Pandora’s box. (…) If indeed you are dealing with a contained retrohepatic caval injury, you will lose containment, converting the situation into uncontrolled venous hemorrhage. Very rapidly you will find yourself trying to squeeze the toothpaste back in the tube.’


‘Every bullet tells a story’: ‘You maybe surprised to learn that the trajectory of the bullet can help you make an early decisions to bail out.’




The medical illustrations alongside the botanical illustrations is the source material for these drawings.
Where is your source material? Whether it is in life or in death.
The initial start of an art work is often in the route of the work, of its subject. Such as here, in these anatomical textbooks concerning the area I think about with an anthropomorphic take on the natural world- namely, that of human and/or ‘its’ potential manipulations on the body.. These inspirations converted into action range from mere interests, to the undeniable ideas which simply have to attempted. It is funny that often it doesn’t matter what anyone says to you about an idea, if you really want it, or it really hits home within you- you are going to make it. These drawings are in a roundabout way very personal to me, though they continue the somewhat fantastical-medical related themes in my work, they touch upon my very current brush with a premature bought on the surgical table.





1 comment:

  1. love these images
    i would love for you to check out my blog and tell me what you think
    Ashley
    http://wise-rabbit-says.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete