All that a heart

These paintings refer to specimen 32M9183 UP35 (Osteoclastoma of the heart) in the UTAS R.A. Rodda Museum. This specimen has an almost pearlescent orange shimmer and appears to be an overly large heart (a swollen heart, if you will). The reason for my initial selection was as simple as it was wrong: that the heart is where we feel love. As hackneyed and clichéd as that sentiment is, I am nonetheless drawn to the enduring figurative image of the swollen heart, full of love.

The paintings offer a bizarre conflation of the swollen, love-filled heart and the diseased cancerous heart. The paintings offer a misreading of the evidence or a re-mystification of the specimen. They show an early engraving of a dissected heart, an image of Adam and Eve from Gustave Doré’s illustrations for ‘Paradise Lost’ and a quotation from the last book that HG Wells wrote.

It is important to look after the health of the heart (both figuratively and actually). Knowledge helps us heal.