Art of Pain
Making pain visible - cyanotype print of blister pack tablets
How do you make pain visible? Norwegian artist Edvard Munch painted his famous work The Scream in 1893 which is possibly the most iconic image of suffering. My challenge is to how to show pain through its relief.
At first I didn’t know how to start. I had been making a few cyanotypes for fun and thought of all the empty blister packets of pain relief tablets I had diligently collected over the past months since my knee operation. I experimented on a small square of paper and was really surprised and pleased with how it turned out.
The silver foils had been folded back to reveal the transparent plastic beneath and when exposed to the sun, the two images made these egg shaped shadows. That started the ball rolling.
I decided to create an artist book that I have tentatively titled Post Operative. I wanted to create it using materials I had to hand. I searched my paper drawers for inspiration and found one large piece of smooth drawing paper, perfect for cyanotype prints (I hope).
Measuring up the paper for a book structure meant I had to do some maths to work out how it could be best divided up. When making books, you have to consider which way the paper folds, working with the paper grain. I was able to cut it into 9 sheets, so a book of 8 pages folded in half, (allowing one sheet for errors) giving sixteen pages in all, or two books of eight pages each.
The next step was planning how best to tell my ‘story’. All the inspiration was already in a sketchbook documenting my pain journey during the first six weeks post surgery. Which book structure suits this narrative is the challenge.
I have used ‘pocket’ books many times before to hold tickets or travel ephemera. I thought that I might do the same with cyanotype images of the blister packs, popping them into ‘pockets’ which reference the blister packs inside boxes of tablets.
This is the first new work that I have planned since my knee surgery and I am undertaking the process slowly. The book will evolve and suggest its own way to work with the materials. I really like the way that cardboard pain relief boxes can be unfolded and their shapes used as cyanotypes.
I started using paracetamol boxes for cyanotypes last year in the UK and was really pleased with the results. Now I am considering these as negative shapes for cyanotype stencils where the blue outlines white spaces which can then be infilled with text, (sort of the reverse of the image below).
How this art of my post operative journey develops is the exciting part of this process of discovery. I really won’t know what it will all look like until the work is done.
I do know that the finished piece has to be able to ‘stand on its own two feet’. Then it can be released into the world with my blessing.
Cyanotype experiment with a flattened out paracetamol box (2023)
