One night in Feb 2020, I asked a friend, a staff nurse at NNUH, if she’d be my guinea-pig and let me paint her portrait. I’d been longing do a series of fly-on-the-wall hospital portraits for some while, and felt a bit nervous about asking. Most didn’t know I’d been painting for years. They only knew me as a doctor. You have to push past the discomfort of vulnerability to share something that seems a bit ‘outside the box’

There is a shyness you feel about sharing something creative. As I started painting, the pandemic began. I found myself painting most mornings and went to work for the late shift.

I wanted to do portraits to lift morale. It was not about the patients but about the staff. We spend our lives in an occupation that we never have a photographic record of. I continued my journey documenting my colleagues in the hospital and primary care during the COVID pandemic.

Fast forward to 2021, and I completed over 70 portraits in Norwich, London and South Wales. The collection was exhibited in Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital, the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, and at Tredegar House, South Wales, the birthplace of the NHS. I was a finalist for the Aneurin Bevan’s People’s Choice Award, for my contribution to morale during the pandemic.