With my formal training in haute couture and a lifelong interest in fashion I am passionate about the cut of clothing, especially a well-cut sleeve on the bias. I am interested in how people relate to what they wear and how they proclaim their individuality through their clothing. I enjoy exploring the relationship between the individual and their apparel.
My initial approach to this project was to explore the association between a uniform and its wearer and how individuals tweak uniforms within permitted parameters. I decided to focus on uniforms in a hospital environment because of my own recent medical experience during which I had noticed the many small ways in which plain uniforms were individualised. I had intended to explore the nuances of detail in clothing and the relationship to the wearer. And then the pandemic intervened, bringing the medical profession front of stage. The stresses to which the NHS staff were so obviously exposed caused me to reflect on the origins of the nursing profession and its relationships with the public it serves and the fact that nurses, in particular, were simultaneously ordinary people and key workers at the frontline of the pandemic.
In each of these three paintings the locked gaze between the two subjects creates an intimacy between them, with the viewer of the painting being an observer that is slightly removed. The severity of the nurses task depicted by the “old” nurse portraits, two of which are after paintings by Zinkeisen and the third by an unknown artist of the same era, is in contrast to the casual observation of the off-duty modern nurse who needs to continue an ordinary life with basic pleasures, here represented by the ice-cream cones.
The headgear worn by the three “old” nurses are symbols of rank which are less visible in modern nurses’ uniforms and entirely absent in the vividly coloured generic “street clothes” of each of the off-duty modern nurses in the foreground.