WAR ARTIST’S RECORD OF COVID STADIUM
The transformation of the Principality Stadium into a 1,500-bed field hospital has been one of the most remarkable developments of the pandemic. War artist Dan Peterson had access to the Dragon’s Heart hospital and has created some incredible and historic
IF SOMEONE said this time last year that there would be a field hospital on the pitch of the Principality Stadium, it would have been unbelievable.
Ysbyty Calon y Ddraig is a place that not many people have seen in person, and hopefully it will stay that way, but it will forever be a symbol of what our Welsh communities have been through over the last few months.
In order to document the life of the hospital and to raise vital funds for the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board’s Art Charity, which supports the wellbeing of patients and staff in the area, war artist Dan Peterson was given exclusive access to capture moments inside.
The special moments between nurse and patient, junior doctors on their rounds and cleaners sweeping the aisles are all captured in Dan’s illustrations.
According to Dan, there is a level of intimacy between the artist and the person being sketched that isn’t quite captured by a camera in the same way.
“Very few people object to being drawn so I think that was an important part of why I was able to capture the images I did,” explained the Cardiffbased artist.
For Dan, it was important that the sketches were not forced situations. He wanted to capture the atmosphere of the hospital in its natural state.
Having little time to sit with patients and perfect his drawings, Dan who usually paints directly with ink, decided to use pencil so he could erase mistakes and perfect the image at a later date.
This is reflected in one of the drawings of a cleaning team. He said: “I was walking down the side and I saw the cleaners coming. I quickly sketched them and took a photograph to finish it off later as that is exactly what I wanted to show. A working hospital. Timing is everything.”
Dan was amazed by the sheer amount of cleaning and sanitisation that was going on at the hospital.
“When I got up to the stands and looked down, perspective was everything, it is huge. And the hallways in the tents on the pitch are much wider. It is different to a usual hospital as everything there has been designed with Covid-19 in mind.
“It even smelt like a hospital,” Dan said, describing it as far from the usual beer smell you would find on match days. Far from the usual rugby shirt Dan has worn before when visiting the stadium, he dressed up in scrubs for the days he was there.
“It is very different from going in the stadium, it felt a bit eerie to be honest being in an enormous place with no one around, it was very quiet.”
While at the hospital, Dan witnessed heartwarming moments between the medical staff and patients.
He explained that most of the patients were elderly and all were in recovery so no longer carried the virus.
A room was set up in the tents on the