Interview with The Surgeon

What inspired my choice? I guess my initial interest came when I was quite young. It started actually when I was about five years old I think. I used to help my mother in the kitchen and I loved cutting up the meat. There always seemed to me to be a right and a wrong way to do it and even at that age, I would often admonish my mother for just 'hacking at it'.

Later I took biology at school and encountered dissection. The taking apart of some dead rodent left most in my class very cold, but the opportunity to - if I may use the word - 'artistically' expose the different organs such as the liver, the heart and so forth was something I delighted in. Bodies - all bodies - are amazing machines and to be able to open them up and discover their secrets was to me far more involving and satisfying than playing football or cricket - it was like an adventure into a foreign land. And as for 'art' - the splattering of paint with a brush or a palate knife hardly came close to the joys of painting in flesh with the scalpel. Naturally, I progressed my studies - it seems safe to skip the boring bits here - which led to where I am today.

Bored? No, definitely not. I haven't lost any of my enthusiasm nor my delight. The clean cut of the knife laying all bare to the observer; the near perfect separation of the skin to reveal the complexities of the most complex animal of all - man. No, it hasn't lost any of its magic for me.

Blood? Blood is natural - not like the chemical drugs that they'd like to pump into us. It's true, blood is a surgeons worst enemy but then it's also the friend. The pumping blood, oozing or spraying about the room is a living reminder of the real magic of the human body. I don't mind it a bit really. Things sometimes get a bit messy and it does reduce visibility a little but as I say, it's natural. It's a big ask to cut someone open and not expect blood.

Regrets? None. I've spent my life doing what I love. OK, well perhaps one. Yes, one regret. After all those years of being careful, I slipped up. I'd spent far too long opening up this old lady when her daughter came in and caught me 'in flagrante delicto' so to speak. Naturally, the cops were ecstatic - finally they'd caught 'The Surgeon' as they called me. Yeah, I slipped up and that's my only regret.

Psychotic killer? Yes, that's what the shrinks said. But no, not in my view. I'm an artist. An artist in flesh.