From diagnosis to here: an artist shares her story

‘Changes’ is a recent painting I created after diagnosis of stage three EGFR+ 19 deletion earlier this year.  In fact, I started the painting just before I had a lobectomy to remove my main tumour in March this year, and completed it (with the figure appearing) when I felt strong enough to get back into the studio in April/May.  

At that time in early February, I had a couple of large pieces in the studio that had been left, not quite abandoned, but paused in mid-flow, when I got my diagnosis, followed by a date for my surgery.  Of course, now I was entering the full-on fight or flight mode, all focus and attention went into coming to terms with this devastating news and imminent major surgery.  The artwork would have to wait, the studio went quiet.

Initially, all I could think about was the lung cancer, and I researched everything I could lay my hands on about this disease, how I’d come to have it, and what I could possibly do about it.  The headspace I needed to paint was full of noisy and confused distractions to do with my health, wellbeing, friends and family, and studio days became endless hours spent on my Mac, with my back to my paintings, whilst I let it all sink in during my crash course in genetic mutations and oncology (I’m no scientist!).

As an artist I am inspired by so much in life, and sometimes find the endless possibilities rather overwhelming.  Though painting has always been my specialism, I have explored multi-media approaches over the years, from photography, film, installation, sculpture, collage and digital, and EVERYTHING interests me!  Landscape? Abstract? Still Life? Portrait? Figure?  Yes to them all!

I consider myself to be very lucky to live in a beautiful location in Yorkshire, which partly inspires my landscape paintings – the moors, hills, textures, topography and climate all fuse to create a dramatic visual in response.  I say ‘partly’ as every place I visit somehow finds its way into my work, as I can’t help but bring other ‘places’ back to my studio and interweave them with my observations, thoughts and experiences. 

When I began to paint ‘Changes’, I was feeling a bit lost, quite numb and very worried, that phase where you’re having the tests and you’ve just got on the rollercoaster.  I had been painting abstract landscapes, with an emphasis on the dramatic contrasts between earth, sky, sea and air.  It was all very elemental, and reflecting now, those landscapes which were external ‘views’ of somewhere, were beginning to turn in on themselves and become almost cellular, micro, and perhaps internal.  I had been worried about my health for some time, felt ‘something was wrong, was growing in there’ and subliminally, this had been gnawing away, feeding into the artwork (as had my political and personal beliefs too but that’s another topic!).

When I came home from hospital, physically and mentally altered, my body and mind doing everything it could to heal and repair, I came back with a little spiral bound sketchbook clutched in my hand.  I’m going to call that little book, ‘Game Changer’.  Every day, for 28 days, I put pen, pencil or paintbrush to paper, recording thoughts, observations, drawings, colour, form, line and shape, until I had filled the book, every page an intricate and very personal response to the situation in which I found myself.  I started the sketchbook a couple of days before surgery, continued every day throughout my hospital stay, and the subsequent days and weeks of painful healing that followed.  

Making that book simply saved me. On that first day in the hospital, I sat in pre-op for almost 6 hours waiting for my slot, and calmly filled 13 pages in those long hours.  I don’t know if I could have got through that wait, alone, without it.  I’m not sure how many patients take with them in their overnight bag, a pencil case, sketchbook, collage pack (pre-selected papers, scissors and glue stick), but I definitely came prepared!  In the high dependency unit that night I did my first post-op drawing, slightly wobbly of line but followed the next morning with calm and controlled drawing once again.  The doctors would come every day to check on my progress, in the sketchbook, as much as my healing!  I continued - I wrote, drew, painted and collaged, every day for exactly a month.

The book is very small, and contains references to an incredibly intense period in my life, and perhaps surprisingly, is full to the brim of potential – ideas to be developed, expanded upon later.  It symbolizes to me an utterly raw slice of time, when energy, fear and positivity somehow generated creative endeavour, potential and hope.  I felt unleashed, fearless, strong, powerful, and ready to paint again.  

When the studio beckoned, I’d go up and look at the work to do.  The momentum on the January paintings had been lost, the space unkempt, order had been lost, and I was different, altered, changed too.  There seemed to be too much to do, physically and mentally, and I found it hard at first to re-engage with the paintings from the new year.   

A significant part of my creative process is thinking, reflecting, and considering, but much is discovered through experimentation, the process of ‘doing’.  ‘Changes’ (untitled at that time) was there, waiting to be developed, and it seemed a completely natural decision to include the body – I could almost see it forming within the shapes and tones already on the canvas.  And I opened my little book often, consulting, reflecting, making connections to that raw energy that had emerged during those 28 days.

When the figure emerged, I knew that this was a pivotal piece of work, both cathartic for me and yet also forward looking, even quietly powerful.  The title is meant to be ambiguous, perhaps suggesting changes we undergo to our physical and mental forms during different times in our lives – puberty, pregnancy, menopause, illness, and also healing, repair and enlightenment.  A metaphor for the myriad of transitions that we go through.  There’s a sense of calm in the stance of the figure, and a serene facial expression expressing a sense of acceptance, an emergence from a chaotic place, complete again, but changed.

Claire Murray, EGFR Positive UK Group Member