Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland, Caring for the Collection is a project that will focus on Art in Healthcare’s vast art collection, enabling us to undertake a programme of maintenance and conservation of artworks currently in our art store.
We are delighted to have the support to recruit two technical roles, who will be dedicated to working with collection artworks and improving how they are stored safely. In November, we appointed Giulia Gentili, our Technician, who brings several years of experience working with a wide range of artists and organisations as an art technician, fabricator and artist.
Followed by the recruitment of our Collection Technician Apprentice, Mina Brennan, who will work closely alongside Giulia. Together, they will review, maintain and restore artworks, with the aim of placing them in hospitals, care homes and community spaces across Scotland. In addition to gaining hands on experience working with the collection, Mina will gain a Museum and Galleries Technician Modern Apprenticeship [SCQF level 7] qualification.
As part of this project, and to celebrate Art in Healthcare’s 35th Anniversary, Mina has launched a blog exploring 35 works from the Art in Healthcare Collection and her findings from her apprenticeship.
Image: ‘The Sculptor’s Studio’ by Paul Martin
Welcome to the ninth blog post from the Collection Technicians!
This week for the Caring for the Collection blog post we’ll be looking at a painting by Paul Martin titled ‘The Sculptor’s Studio’.
Paul Martin was born in Bournemouth in 1948 and went on to study fine art at Birmingham School of Art. Birmingham School of art has an interesting history. During the late 1800’s it centred a large amount of its teaching around the Arts and Crafts movement focusing on a more practical education. Post war however the school moved toward a more modern expressionist approach, around the time when Martin would have studied there. In 1971 the school was merged to form the city of Birmingham Polytechnic. After Birmingham, Martin went on to study at the Royal Academy which had a more technical approach. Paul Martin’s artist bio, which can be read on his website, states that he found neither the more expressionist approach nor the technical approach fit with his practice. This is noticeable in his work as it is both technical and dreamlike, mixing reality and memory in a unique way. In this painting, ‘The Sculptor’s Studio’, it is hard to tell which figures are the sculptures and which are not. Additionally, the movement in each element gives the entirety of the work a surreal feeling. The colours are muted which makes it feel like you’re looking at the scene through a haze or mist adding to this dreamlike quality.
In an interview with Edinburgh Art Festival Martin said of his paintings, “they are not ever meant to be philosophical treaties about either art or reality, so when we look at the paintings the qualities of light for example or the sense of the mystery of the objects are the important things, and the things in a visual sense people are being invited to enjoy”.
Here, I think Martin is inviting us to see the world the way he does and see the small joys that can be found in light and objects. You can see this in another work of his which we have in the collection titled ‘Repapering,’ which shows a group of people wallpapering a wall. This is not a huge important event which Martin is documenting but he’s asking us to appreciate it and acknowledge it as something which should be noticed.
Image: ‘Repapering’ by Paul Martin
The scale of Martin’s work also adds to this philosophy. Taking small moments and showing them to us on a monumental scale, makes the unnoticed moments important.
Caring for the Collection is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland.
Thanks to National Lottery players, we will be able to dedicate time to improve the condition of our artworks currently in our store, so that they will be able to be displayed in health and social care settings across Scotland.
Museum & Galleries Technician Modern Apprenticeship is supported by Museums Galleries Scotland provider of the apprenticeship, mentor and SCQF level 7
25 March 2026 by
Amy Miles