Early on in the pandemic I was contacted by consultant and art collector, Peter Collins who had bought my paintings and thought that Covid Wards might be interesting subjects for me. He sent me photos from his hospital and I was instantly inspired by the medics in PPE and the patients in neon-lit settings. I sourced other images from tv and did a substantial amount of works on paper and cardboard from delivery boxes. The images of masked doctors appealed because I like painting figures that are semi-hidden and made mysterious or threatening. My doctors and nurses are transformed through hoods and visors like creatures from Bosch or like medieval plague doctors. I imagined their alien appearance to be especially nightmarish for the patient suffering from Covid hallucinations, and so painted pictures from this point of view with the hooded doctors hanging over the bed like the jackal-headed god Anubis bending over a figure in Egyptian painting.
