Susan Aldworth worked as artist-in-residence at the Royal London Hospital alongside consultant neuroradiologist Paul Butler in 2001-2 and again in 2005-6. Watching a series of neuroradiological operations she began to investigate the problem of consciousness, first in a series of drawings and watercolours and subsequently in an ongoing series of etchings. There is an element of the medical illustration to these prints but the purely organic and physical is melded with overtones of the lyrical and spiritual.

Working with artist and printer Nigel Oxley (who worked for many years at Kelpra Studio) Aldworth experimented with the media to find a way of describing the relationship between the physical brain and the mind. Oxley’s experience and technical expertise enabled her to work on a large scale, and to produce a negative, or white, line (through the chance discovery that a line drawn on the etching plate in permanent marker acted as a resist). This gave an unprecedented fluency to the etchings. They also allowed the unpredictable effects of their materials to produce serendipitous effects – as when they let meths bleed into white spirit on top of the aquatint, producing a fluid organic imagery. The resulting prints read like maps of brain activity and consciousness, and seem in some way to describe or embody the imagination.