'Forest Fears: Vol. I 'Storm Damage'' (2000)

60x40” Black & white photographs mounted on MDF (4 in series)

‘Forest Fears’ comprises of two separate ‘volumes’ that communicates the emotions generated from the fear, pain and recovery experienced by the artist from a kidney operation, captured through the metaphorical and cultural symbolism of nature and fairy stories.

Volume I, 'Storm Damage' is concerned with the issue of time in terms of growth and ageing by leading us deep into a dark foreboding forest where decay and transformation take place. The pairing of the naked, scarred body against the scarred, knotted ‘insides’ of the tree suggests that both the body and the environment are fragile entities, susceptible to pain.

"Her will had gone, only the animal was left, the animal holding on to life at any price. She, all of us, would choose to die with dignity, to accept the inevitable with restraint. We don’t imagine that the body we have tamed will turn savage. Her hands tearing the bed clothes, her face twisted in pain, tormented thrashing from side to side as her systems failed and her organs ignored the chain of command. She was full of fluid undrained and undrainable. We had taken out the tubes that gave her as much hurt as they relieved."

Jeanette Winterson, ‘Art & Lies’, 1994, p.114