Portrait of Patient: Trinity art exhibition charts experience of chronic illness
Posted on: 01 October 2018
Four paintings charting one patient’s experience of long-term chronic illness have gone on display in the Trinity Centre for Health Science at St James’s Hospital.
Entitled Portrait of a Patient, the exhibition features four patient portraits by artist Sinead Lawless (winner of RTE’s Paint the Nation 2016) from a series of 10 works that chart Sinead’s own personal experience with a long-term chronic illness, ulcerative colitis. The exhibition will run for one year.
The exhibition aims to use art and, in particular, the lived experience of the patient, to assist the education of health care professionals. The exhibition is in the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences close the medical library and hopes to provoke students into thinking about how illness affects the patient over and above the physical manifestations. The project has been supported by Trinity College Dublin’s Provost Fund for Visual and Performing Arts.
Speaking about the project, Cillin Condon, Senior Physiotherapist, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, St James’s Hospital, said: “As a health professional involved in education, my colleagues and I are delighted that the Provost Visual and Performing Art fund has agreed to support Sinead Lawless’s ‘Portrait of a Patient’ project. We hope that it will provoke students for all disciplines to consider the impact of disease and illness on the patients that they will encounter during their clinical training. Sinead had captured some of thoughts and feelings that chronic disease can have on an individual.”
Artist Sinead Lawless added: “Portrait of a Patient is my on-going project. It permeates through everything else that I do. For most of my life I have found myself held ransom to illness and disorder in one form or another. It is not something we choose but can get in the way of our career, our goals and our relationships. It makes us vulnerable and dependent, makes us question who we are, and our role in society.”
“In an information-ready, self-help society, the guilt of being ill belongs to the patient. Taking responsibility for yourself is the modern day mantra. Although there is merit in this, it can also lead to a lack of empathy. Some illnesses can’t be ‘fixed’. Being a long-term patient has taken its toll on my self-esteem. At the beginning, I used to think I needed to wait until I felt better before I could continue with my life. Now I realise that illness is something that I need to adapt to and factor in. We can’t spend our whole lives waiting. Illness and disorders are forever present and they affect us all in different ways.”
About the Artist
Sinead Lawless was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis in 2006. What followed was over 10 years of pain, anxiety, depression, hospitalisation, medication, surgery, and almost death. What also followed was awakening, awareness, gratitude and survival.
In 2015, after 14+ years of working in graphic design, illness and frequent hospitalisation forced her to take time out. Sinead began to attend life drawing sessions and workshops at Schoolhouse for Art. Sinead explains: “As I lay in hospital or at home in bed I would often open my phone to write down how I was feeling. The words would flow out, sometimes rhyming, sometimes not, but I would always feel better afterwards. I would rarely revisit these notes or try to perfect them once the moment had passed.”
After another major surgery in 2016 her health improved dramatically and she opened up her collection of notes/words/poems and curated them to best represent the cyclical journey of illness and health, and work on a visual representation.
http://www.sineadlawless.com/portrait-of-a-patient/