One of Professor Hutchison’s patient and painting in the Saving Faces Art Project featured in Best Magazine.
Best - People stare - but my beautiful boy's a work of artThe Saving Faces Art project by Mark Gilbert featured in the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Dimbleby Cancer Care Service’s head and neck newsletter.
Professor Hutchison featured in an article in The Telegraph, titled “Putting cancer into sharper focus”
The Saving Faces Art Project by Mark Gilbert was hosted at the the Leeds City Art Gallery and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter. Read a review below.
Review of SF Art Project in LeedsProfessor Hutchison speaks about Cy-scope, “A device used in metallurgy [which] should simplify the diagnosis of the mouth cancer”
The Economist 29.06.2002 - Close up and PersonalOne of Professor Hutchison’s patients, features in The Mirror.
Read full article below
The Mirror 04.04.2002 - I risked by child's life to heal her faceThe Saving Faces Art Project was featured in one of the world’s most renowned papers, The New York Times, following its exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
“Gilberts powerful portraits allow us to experience something of what the patients themselves may feel. They capture more than just the form of the patients faces—the intensity of the face damaged by trauma, or unveiled during the surgical process, and the changing emotions and character of the patients. Many of the “post-op” images demonstrate the importance of surgery and the positive impact it can have.”
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Iain Hutchison fell in love with the human face during his medical training. Helping out in A & E, he became adept at patching up ‘Saturday Night Specials’. ‘I’d see a lot of young people who’d been in fights or accidents. If their faces were affected, they were devastated. All I was doing was stitching them up, but the physical and psychological effects on the patients were dramatic and instant.’ He is now a consultant in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) at St Bartholomew’s and The Royal London Hospital, and one of the leading facial reconstruction surgeons in the UK.
In 1999 he established the Saving Faces art project, inviting artist Mark Gilbert to paint his patients before, during and after surgery. The result was the exhibition ‘Saving Faces’, currently at the National Portrait Gallery in London, an uplifting series that charts the physical and emotional journey of people with facial disfigurement. The project is unique, and typical of this very untypical surgeon.
Hutchison is a big, warm character, with an aura of benevolent disorganisation that belies his world-leading skill and precision in the operating theatre. When he discusses surgery he talks about ‘enjoying it hugely’, playing Tamla Motown in theatre ‘to get me going’, but also of being ‘devastated’ when even his best efforts haven’t been enough to save a patient. His outstanding attribute as a surgeon is his courage. He takes on operations that others shy away from – ‘high-risk surgery, with a good chance of complications or even fatality’.
He divides his time between surgery, clinical work and the Facial Surgery Research Foundation, the charity he founded for research into oral and facial disfigurement. ‘I never get through my work. I don’t see enough of my family (he is married to Helena Kennedy QC, with three children). I’m constantly late and full of guilt.’
[Reproduced from The Guardian. Read the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2002/mar/31/life1.lifemagazine1]
The Saving Faces Art Project by Mark Gilbert features in the Daily Express.
Daily Express 30.03.2002 - Mentions SF Art Exhibition