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Work from 2006

I submitted proposals to a few different hospitals this year for ‘percent for art’ schemes.  I have returned to the ‘Fingerprint’ motif. I like the idea that art could have a healing role.  The following text is taken from one of these proposals :

 

Hands and then Fingerprints were my starting point for this project –

hands, symbolizing the care and support offered by Hospital staff, and

fingerprints, symbolizing the uniqueness of each patient in their care.

 

How I use fingerprints is very different to the conventional way, the bright colours contradicting any notion of security or surveillance.  These fingerprints emphasise the fact that every single person is special, that

they are cherished in this Hospital, and that each person will be cared for according to their own particular needs.

 

I have been working with the fingerprint motif for some years now.  During my residency in Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, I collected prints from

visitors to my studio.  It was fascinating (for the visitors as well as for myself) to study the endless combinations of lines and to notice the particular differences on each person’s hands.  I made no attempt to catalogue or categorise these prints.  Indeed, I overlaid several prints to produce a kaleidoscope of colour on the one page.  Then I began isolating interesting sections and cutting them out.  Like visualising faces in the clouds, I could see tiny faces, tiny landscapes, rippling water, tiny maps

etc. in the sections of fingerprint.  Once you discover one image, you

realise that there are many more to be found.  The fingerprint sections above have been enlarged—just to make them easier to examine.

 

 

I was shortlisted for the Cork Hospital