Flowers Gallery is very happy to announce The Scottish National Portrait Gallery's acquisition of Ken Currie's painting of Professor Dame Sue Black, Baroness Black of Strome, The Unknown Man, 2019.

Ken Currie and Professor Black first met during the recording of a BBC Radio 4 programme to discuss the relationship between art and anatomy, following which the artist accepted an invite to visit Professor Black at work in Dundee, where she showed him a dissection room. Deeply moved by this experience and Black's work, Currie went on to ask Professor Black to sit for a portrait. The painting depicts Professor Black in surgical robes standing behind an unknown, covered cadaver.

Black has dedicated her life to the study of forensic anthropology. As well as working at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee, assisting the police with specialist forensic work, she has worked in many war-torn and disaster-hit countries, including Iraq, Kosovo, and Thailand, helping to, in her words, "reunite the identity constructed during a life with what remains of the corporeal form in death”.

The painting is currently on display in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh and is featured in the below short series by National Galleries Scotland here.