Nick and I have always had a passion for art. It gives us great pleasure to have art around us in our home and it occurred to us that our work environment would be more attractive to us and hopefully to our colleagues and patients if we had art in our dental practice as well.

Our particular preference is for modern art and when we refurbished our waiting room and Nick's surgery in our Ashford practice, we put up a few modern prints. Quite a few patients commented, some liked them. Nick had read about a dental practice in Glasgow which was also a registered art gallery. The more we thought about the idea, the more it appealed. We hoped patients would find the idea of art in the surgery therapeutic. Fish tanks and magazines may appeal to some, but maybe art could provide a more pleasant diversion and give people a chance to experience original art perhaps for the first time. We decided to look further into the possibility of using our walls (waiting rooms and surgeries) for art exhibitions.

We always felt that art galleries can be intimidating places. Even though we're interested in art, galleries can feel uncomfortable. We thought it would be exciting to display art in a living setting. And so, 'the waiting gallery' came into being with four exhibitions changing the ambience of the practice each year.

We had enormous fun designing the new practice at 18 Wimpole Street, which from the outset we wanted to have a flavour of the Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. After the success of 'the waiting gallery' we have decided to continue to show work of promising young artists in our workplace. Iranian born Akram Rahmanzadeh's thought-provoking paintings are proving popular with patients.