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IN THE 鈥渂efore鈥� image, a woman鈥檚 bare torso emerges in honeyed tones from a bluish grid. In the next painting, the same woman 鈥� now with far larger breasts 鈥� has an unmistakable bikini tan line and seems to stand a tad straighter.

British portrait artist Jonathan Yeo鈥檚 latest collection, You鈥檙e Only Young Twice, includes several such transformations. Yeo, who has previously created portraits of politicians including David Cameron and George W. Bush, now aims to explore the way plastic surgeons are blurring the distinction between portraiture and medical procedure.

Yeo says it used to be portrait artists who applied their era鈥檚 ideals of beauty to their subjects, but now surgeons are assuming that role. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e becoming artists themselves, sculpting with real bodies,鈥� he says.

In 2010 more than 9.4 million plastic surgery procedures were performed worldwide. The aim of the show, Yeo says, is 鈥渢o get people to look from a slightly different point of view and accept that this is here to stay鈥�.

To create the 17 works in the collection, Yeo obtained permission to study photographs of people undergoing cosmetic surgery and watch their operations. As someone who has spent 20 years painting faces, he says it was 鈥渦tterly riveting鈥� to get a glimpse of the musculature beneath. Yeo has become fascinated with plastic surgery and hopes to explore the subject further, but he has also developed some strong views on the practice as a result of this project. For one thing, he thinks people underestimate the physical severity of the procedures.

One of his paintings depicts a woman just after surgery, her face swaddled in white cloth. Though middle-aged, the woman resembles a battered child. 鈥淪he looks like someone who has come out of the jungle in the middle of a war with a head wound,鈥� he says.

He also wonders about the potential for plastic surgery trends to produce homogeneity. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a slightly odd thing that we can change our bodies to look like whatever celebrity is popular at the moment.鈥�

聯It鈥檚 a slightly odd thing that we can change our bodies to look like whatever celebrity is popular聰

Yeo worries that too much plastic surgery can take away the individual complexity that comes with age. 鈥淚 prefer older faces,鈥� he says, 鈥渨hen you can see the narrative of their lives written in the lines.鈥�