This drawing in watercolour pencil and wash on stretched canvas mounted on pine is about medical treatment for chemical imbalance. It and its accompanying versions were originally to be titled 'Med-chains', and before that 'Healing'. So they are about a lifelong medical treatment and the feelings and images that a lifetime of this summon. The first title 'Healing' was intended with sarcasm, but it fell short of the mark in trying to sum up in a word the sorrow and pain they are about. I think that if a life is to be spent in treatment then sarcasm is a low emotion to summon, and something more meaningful should be aimed for to be said. In the artworks are two hands touching or joined as though in prayer, and they are counterpoised next to one or two hypodermic syringes. The allusion to prayer is meant to be a spiritual one. But the syringes are a purely physical form of medical treatment, and contain within them a bio-reactive solution. They replace in modern science the Mass of communion. The pictures also have snakes, a wreath of flowers, a chain, a crescent moon and a rectilinear blocked out cross design. Not to mention of course the blood which seeps out of the syringes and flows down across the hands in prayer. All these symbols were used to represent life and death, sin and the caduceus or ancient rod of 'ascelpius' - being the universal symbol of medical practice - ,darkness light and relief, crucifixion, and slavery to an enforced mode of living. While blood carries life, it is interfered with by the violence of wielding a syringe. The snake is entwined with touching hands, so sin and science are in the medicine and the fault.
Thanks for viewing. xx lol