IT is often said that life imitates art.

And perhaps one recent example is the work of Huddersfield-trained artist Frank To.

The 29-year-old, with a degree in Fine Art from Huddersfield University, has launched his first major show in two years, at the Leith Gallery in Edinburgh. It features paintings depicting medieval plague doctors.

The opening was quickly followed by news reports of a breakthrough in a cure for the bubonic plague, by scientists at Albany Medical College in New York.

Frank, who has long been fascinated with the strange costumed figures who wore long pointed masks, was amazed to see how topical his subject matter was.

The Glasgow-born artist said: “I did the exhibition and a week later it was being reported that scientists had found a cure.

“It was quite funny because I was reading about it in the same paper that I had been in – dressed up as a plague doctor!

“Perhaps I sniffed a cure for bubonic plague in the air!”

The plague doctor was a special medical physician of the Middle Ages who saw people who had the bubonic plague.

The beak they had was a filter for what they believed to be bad, infected air.

Frank has always been intrigued with the 1600s and 1700s, when science was starting to emerge but alchemy was still prevalent.