Ink on paper
‘Kusôzu’ is a Buddhist form of Japanese painting that depicts a dead body in nine stages of decomposition.
This series was made after working as an Art Therapist with cancer patients in a large London hospital. The hospital environment is sterile, utterly divorced from the natural world. But patients are often acutely aware of the forces of nature, trying to make sense of their own rebellious cells accelerating the destruction of the body. Sometimes my role was to help people find an acceptance of dying. The work required an acceptance of my own mortality too, and that my body will one day return to the earth.