Painful Reality

Science

Objective reality can be defined as a common agreement about conscious experiences. This includes the conscious experience of our body, which is created by the brain making best-guess predictions about the sensory information it receives. Only we have access to the reality of our own body, and how it feels remains real even when not aligned with objective reality. Distorted experiences of the body can co-occur with chronic pain – for example, feeling swollen or ‘wrong’ when objectively appearing ‘normal’ to GPs, family, employers, etc. More information can be found here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10651017/

Method

The artwork was created using pencil, ink, and coloured crayon, on 22.5 x 15.5 inches paper. It depicts the various conscious experiences of Christine, who has lived with persistent sciatica pain for 15 years (https://livewellwithpain.co.uk). The poet (www.lboro.ac.uk/research/experts/roger-newport) first met Christine at a science festival, collaborating on to talk about pain. Roger and Anna wanted to visualise Christine’s conscious experience to help audiences understand how it felt to her, and worked with the artist to realise this. The poem seeks to complete the loop from the art's visualisation of Christine’s ever-shifting conscious experience to her visceral, persistent and enduring pain.

Bio

Anna Fraser is an artist based on Exmoor in Somerset UK. She has worked as an artist all her life, mostly on commission and to sell. Her works include animal and human portraits, decorative pieces, and community projects. Art is how she communicates with people, sketching wherever she goes, even if it’s just in her head or on the back of an envelope. Anna says that she has often been told that she captures the ‘real feel’ of my subjects, which she hopes she has managed here for Christine. http://annafraser.com 

Accompanying Poem - by Roger Newport

I might look normal

But my leg is worthless crap

And it flipping hurts

I might look normal

But my leg is a tree trunk

And it flipping hurts

I might look normal

But my foot is an ice block

And it flipping hurts

I might look normal

But my leg contains fairy lights

And it flipping hurts

What is consciousness?

Mine is the qualia of pain

And do you know what?