The professionals’ view of the world

Jul 1 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Dr Karen Wilson

DR KAREN WILSON works in data management at Liverpool Hope.

“My painting at New Brighton was done on a very early, blustery November day last year,” she says. “After a couple of hours, we had to retire to a nearby cafe to thaw out! I was very happy with the low horizon – it looks like you could walk under the lowering sky into the distance.

“Ten years ago, I was Peter’s art technician and provided support for Teaching the Eye To See, but then couldn't resist joining myself.”

Dr Mary Cunliffe

DR CUNLIFFE is a senior consultant in children’s pain management and anaesthesia, and is regularly called to lecture abroad. She lives in Calderstones and works at Alder Hey.

“It’s a close-up of a hydrangea-type bush in my garden, but partly made up. There’s a lot of pattern and intricacy and colour that you don’t see until you’re close up. Light and shade and how things twist round each other. I say I’m a frustrated Georgia O’Keefe.”

Patience, concentration, and dexterity are skills she came equipped with.

“I have to be fairly precise at what I do, especially if I’m dealing with a baby weighing a kilo and putting a drip into it, or a tube into its lungs,” she says.

“Being an anaesthetist, there’s no doubt that for periods of time it’s very quiet and there’s nothing to do but stay alert. It’s quite a funny speciality, really. You have to have a certain temperament.”

She has also started a clinic for children with chronic pain, from conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or shingles. “People, even doctors, don’t think children can have chronic pain year after year, but they do,” she reflects.

“There’s a bit of stress on some level when you’re actually doing your art and working out how you want everything,” she says. “But it’s nothing like stress at work.”

Scientist David Cross

SCIENTIST David Cross, from Woolton, qualified as a chemical engineer and worked in industry before specialising in manufacturing ultra pure water for the pharmaceutical industry at a plant in Bootle.

“I did art until third form at school, then I had to choose between art and geography. I thought geography would be more useful. I wish in some ways I’d taken art.”

He joined the class after surprising himself by asking for art materials for a retirement present.

For this picture he used a mirror, to keep light and shade in the image.

“I thought I wouldn’t do ‘happy’ because it’s probably not the face I normally wear. It seemed more honest that way. But you’re concentrating so much on getting it right that you forget it’s your face.” Eyes are the hardest feature to master.

“If you alter them even slightly, you can make the face unrecognisable,” he explains. “I thought I looked a bit younger in the painting, but I really can’t tell. You have to rely on other people’s opinions.”

Pam Clein, Lib-Dem councillor for Childwall

PAM CLEIN, Lib-Dem councillor for Childwall, used rods made of three tightly-rolled pages of the Liverpool Daily Post as a skeleton for her sculpture, which she then covered with plastercast, sprayed and polished.

“The way the figure ended up sitting, with long hair and very, very slim, she looked like a young girl. I thought ‘what would she be doing?’ Maybe holding a mobile phone.”

She was keen on art at school, but after starting college and training as a teacher, and then having children, hobbies went out of the window.

“Those three hours on Wednesday afternoon are completely my time,” she says. “It’s my creative side instead of just going to meetings and dealing with constituents’ problems all the time.

“I look at what I’ve made and I think, ‘How did I do that?’“

It’s changed the way she views her city.

“You tend to walk along and not look up, involved with your own thoughts. When I’m walking through the city, I tend to look up now and see my city in a different light. All the modern stuff with the old.”