One of Professor Hutchison’s patients, features in The Mirror.

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The 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.

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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.

“Henry de Lotbinière was a happily married man with a successful career as a barrister and a passion for cricket. Then cancer ate away half his skull. Does he feel that life has dealt him a bad deal? Not at all, he tells Libby Brooks – he’s carrying on just as he did before.”

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For years, the portrait painter Mark Gilbert had no qualms about disappointing his sitters in the name of art. “They found my paintings unflattering,” the slight, 32-year-old Glaswegian confesses. “I couldn’t give a monkey’s how my models felt and I’d exaggerate any blemish.”

That was before he found himself working with subjects whom he absolutely could not offend, and whose flaws demanded compassion rather than mockery. “I couldn’t go off on any Bacon-esque artistic tangents. Every mark I made had to be as honest as possible. I didn’t want to feel inhibited. But it mattered how they felt.”

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The Saving Faces Art Project by Mark Gilbert features in the Ham and High.

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The Saving Faces Art project by Mark Gilbert featured in the Art Review London.

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