Scottish artist Victoria Crowe has selected Ken Currie's 2002 painting Three Oncologists as her favourite Scottish work of art in a written piece for the Fleming Collection.
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To create this painting of Professors RJ Steele, Sir Alfred Cushieri and Sir David P. Lane of the Department of Surgery and Molecular Oncology, Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, Currie visited an operating theatre to observe them carry out, what was then research, and has since become internationally important work in the fight against cancer. Currie took individual casts of their faces, rather than having prolonged sittings, which he then hung in his studio as reference.
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Victoria Crowe writes: "It’s fascinating to learn that he made lifemasks of the three protagonists to reference when painting them. There is a distancing of personality going on here, an emphasis on 'role' rather than normal human contact, the same distancing that oncologists have to make with balancing emotional empathetic connection with their patients and the calculated rational of scientific procedure."
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