Tag Archives: painting and disease

Breast Cancer: Research

Posted by npaul on

Acrylic on paper (1994)

Another in my series, Breast Cancer: A Progress. The last one, the one that looks (looked then) toward the future. I wrote about it two decades ago but do not have my notes at hand just now, so will update this post when I do.

I have fallen behind on my monthly posts, as writing poetry lately has been my direction rather than visual art. If I could, I would share my poems with you (many since January, it’s been a hard winter), but apparently even an obscure online appearance could disqualify anything I write from eventual publication. (Yes, a very very long shot to be published, I know; I have trouble appreciating the poems I do see published, perhaps a generational thing.) So, as long as I submit to journals, I cannot let on what I’ve been up to these past weeks.

Breast Cancer: Treatment (I)

Posted by npaul on

Acrylic on paper (1994)

Size (not documented, work now in private collection)

Another in my series Breast Cancer: A Progress. This is what I wrote in 1994:

“Treatment for breast cancer is for many women a nightmare. They feel powerless, dependent on the good will and expertise of the medical profession. Surgery and radiotherapy are the methods used to eradicate the “primary” cancer (the breast lump itself). While undergoing both kinds of treatments, the woman is necessarily immobilized. Removal of the cancerous mass by the surgical knife is at least easily comprehensible; radiotherapy however is mysterious and frightening, for the woman must descend below ground level where the powerful and dangerous machines are kept in thick-walled vaults.

Sources/Acknowledgements:

Recumbent figure: Model/coffin of Tutankhamen, flanked by falcon and human-headed bird (Egyptian, 14th century BC)

Angel at the window, white curtain: Giotto (Italy, 14th century), “Vision of Anna”

Moth: Stephen Dalton, photograph of Lepidoptera (Spurge Hawk, sphinx) in Borne on the Wind: The Extraordinary World of Insects in Flight

Leopard fur: Robert Vavra, photograph in I Love Nature More

Goose emblem: Egyptian hieroglyph for fear

Stairs: David Hockney, preparatory Polaroid photographs for “Paper Pools” series”