oil on canvas, hospital textile application
In the painting Counting Heartbeats I bring together several ideas: the medical monitoring of cardiac activity, dependence on technology, youthful carelessness and the ambiguity of the situation. The title Counting Heartbeats has a poetic and metaphorical quality and by bringing together art and medicine additional narratives and meanings emerge. In medicine the concept of cardiac monitoring encompasses a broad range of methods used to examine and evaluate heart rhythm, the electrical activity of the heart, its structural condition, and blood circulation. Outside the medical context it evokes associations with emotions and “matters of the heart” — love. The work also carries a trace of youthfulness.