Artist Brigid Collins has a particular interest in linking images and poetry and often works with writers, poets and other artists or making for her paintings and mixed media work.
This work came about after the poet Kathleen Jamie asked Brigid if she would draw Kathleen’s recent mastectomy scar.
According to Kathleen, following her operation she was examining her scar in the mirror: “As I turned this way and that, I thought it looked like the low shores of an island, seen from afar. Or a river, seen from above. A bird’s-eye view of a river. Or a map. Then, I fancied it looked like the stem of a rose. With that, a line of Burns arrived in my head. ‘You seize the flo’er, the bloom is shed’.”
You can read more about this extraordinary collaboration online. 
This work is one of those included in ‘Frissure: Prose Poems and Artworks’ (Polygon, 2013 ) by Kathleen Jamie and Brigid Collins.

© University of Stirling / The artist

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