Creative approach to skin health inspires new exhibition at Derby Museum & Art Gallery
A pioneering project blending art, science and history will be featured at Derby Museum & Art Gallery this year, offering a fresh and deeply human perspective on how we observe and understand the skin.
Visual Literacy: Seeing the Skin is a collaboration between Derby & Burton Hospitals Air Arts team and UHDB Consultant Dermatologist Dr Tanya Bleiker. The project has also been supported by Derby Museums, the British Association of Dermatologists, The Dowling Club, the Royal College of Physicians’ Museum, and the Willan Library.
Workshops that challenge and inspire
Led by Air Arts’ resident artist, E J Lance, a series of bespoke workshops have invited clinicians and students to explore dermatology through a creative lens. Using historical dermatological collections and their own skin as inspiration, participants were encouraged to develop a new kind of visual language, one that deepens observational skills while supporting wellbeing through art.
This is the first time in the UK that, in a visual literacy session, participants have used experimental drawing approaches to develop a visual descriptive language.
“The ability to observe and describe the skin is central to the diagnosis and good care of people with skin disease,” said Dr Tanya Bleiker. “By taking inspiration from the Joseph Wright collection in Derby, we improved our observational skills through creative art using different techniques and materials. Improving our observational and creative skills has not only benefitted how we assess people with skin conditions, but also boosted our mental health and mindfulness through art.”
Growing national interest
Early feedback from the project has been overwhelmingly positive. Participants have described the workshops as transformative, with some requesting they be made mandatory training. The programme has already been delivered to dermatology consultants, registrars and other clinicians across UHDB, as well as the British Association of Dermatologists. NHS England has also commissioned workshops linked to the project.
As the project continues to grow, it has gained national attention, being presented at the 11th International Health & Humanities Conference and The Derby Medical Society’s annual meeting, with further invitations to events planned throughout 2025.
New artworks inspired by Wright and workshop participants
This spring, the project will feature in Joseph Wright: A Life on Paper at Derby Museum & Art Gallery, where a new body of work by E J Lance will debut. These large-scale surreal anatomical ink and scalpel black-and-white cut figures will feature three imagined forms: Joseph Wright himself, a female subject from his works and a non-gender-specific figure. Together, they form the Astronauts of Life – ethereal beings wearing “skins” made up of patterns, lines and textures drawn from Wright’s work and the creative explorations of workshop participants and historical dermatological drawings of skin conditions.
The heads of the figures, inspired by Wright’s theatrical headwear, are reimagined as astronaut helmets – cut to appear “full of light.” Suspended like astronauts drifting in space, the figures reflect doctors as pioneers, and sometimes as solitary explorers in the vast landscape of healthcare.
“Through this project, I’ve seen clinicians shift from technical language to deeply poetic descriptions of skin,” said E J Lance. “There’s power in slowing down and truly seeing what’s in front of you. The skin becomes more than a site of diagnosis – it becomes a story. The new works are a tribute to that act of looking, and to the skin as a shared landscape.”
Lucy Bamford, Senior Art Consultant at Derby Museums commented, “We are thrilled to be able to share Lance’s latest works with our audiences. These ‘Astronaut’s of Light’, inspired in part by Joseph Wright’s drawings, suggest new and through-provoking ways of looking at his work. They bring a fresh resonance to the practise of drawing more widely too, stimulating important questions about why we draw and the incredible, life-changing uses it might be put to.”
What’s next for the project
Looking ahead, a new strand of workshops inspired by historical dermatological drawings of people of colour and rare wax skin moulages is planned for 2025/26. An ‘Alternative Anatomy’ programme is also in development with the UHDB Medical Education team, extending the project’s reach to students at Derby and Nottingham universities.
Visual Literacy: Seeing the Skin continues to demonstrate how creativity can enrich clinical practice, foster wellbeing, and build a new kind of language – one drawn not only from books and microscopes, but from lived experience, imagination, and the body itself.
