Artwork description:

This work was commissioned by a PhD student. It was to illustrate how art and science can inform each other.

The large green shapes are describing macrophages, the bodies white blood cells that are the first responders to infection. They are a blunt instrument mean't to ingest and destroy infection. The gold dots represent staphylococcus aureus which is commonly called MRSA. This abbreviation stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus.
Methicillin is an antibiotic which was once the best weapon against staph aureus. Worryingly it is no longer able to do this because of overuse. Treatment of MRSA is now challenging. Aureus comes from the latin word aurum gold. The colonies of organisms are often golden. It is a gram positive cocci that literally means golden grape cluster berry.

I can appreciate this work is quite niche to molecular science but it is also a vehicle to communicate the beauty of science. The visual imagery and narrative is fascinating.
The work looks quite abstract but is in fact realistic in its content and representation.

The method used - Etching on three large copper plates using sugar lift aquatint and hand painted gold watercolour.

Materials used:

Oil based printing ink, gold watercolour and somerset satin paper.

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