The Three Designs I Made in Hospital

Hello,

Here are three patterns I designed in hospital.

I spent quite a lot of 2021 and 2022 in hospital being treated for cancer, having operations and chemotherapy and fun things like that.

After the first operation I had, I spent about a week in hospital and didn’t feel too bad. I felt I should be doing something, so started playing with some design ideas.

A short time before then, I’d seen an artwork by Kim Beom for a show called Random Life. It was a tile design, and I liked it a lot. It showed four different characters, divided into quarters in such a way that they could be fit together in any combination.

I decided to make my own version, and there was something about being in an NHS hospital, where you catch all kinds of people at an interesting time, that made it feel meaningful.

I made another design that pushed the idea further. I focussed this design on faces. I thought of all the people who receive medical treatment and get patched up and then sent on their way. Most people go in and have treatment on one particular part of their body. I was thinking generally, of people and parts, and wondering how the medics’ memories of all of us patients must be like a sea of faces.

I’m sure none of that comes across in the design, which just looks like some funny faces. But that’s what I was thinking in my hospital bed when I designed it.

Also while in hospital I missed my wife and son a lot. I thought I should use that quartering technique to make a pattern my son would like, with animals and vehicles. So I made this one.

I left hospital with the basic sketches for these finished, and spent a few days completing them at home and making sure they fit together well, and that the colours more or less worked.

A few weeks later I sent art prints of them to the surgeon, anaesthetist and consultant who’d helped me, as a thank you. They’d seen me making the designs when they’d dropped by to see how I was recovering.

David