Living with Pain
Work in progress 2024-ongoing
“I’m not an artist but I wanted to be able to describe my pain through photography,” says Clare, who has secondary breast cancer. “I can see why it’s been extremely difficult to get the right pain relief because there is no language for it. The nearest I can come up with is weird and wonderful similes, like bees trapped in a vent or ants crawling inside me. Working with photography has been a way of somehow getting to the core of things.”
Living With Pain is currently a work in progress. Over the last year I have worked with 6 participants who live with Chronic Pain.
Pain is invisible—frequently misunderstood, uniquely experienced and difficult to verbalise. Even healthcare professionals struggle to grasp its true impact, as reducing pain to a numerical scale fails to capture how it fractures daily life, relationships and identity. My project makes pain visible through artistic expression, revealing personal realities that clinical assessments struggle to access.
Since 2023, I have collaborated with Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, the Chronic Pain Neurotechnology Network and individuals living with chronic pain. I listen empathetically to understand each person’s unique truth before offering creative processes that help them express their pain authentically. Visual themes are tailored to each person’s personal circumstances.
Through photography, writing, mark-making and storytelling, the collaborative creative process becomes both therapeutic and clarifying. Participants find ways to express what was previously trapped within their bodies. At its heart, this work addresses a basic human need: to be seen, understood and believed
.
