Self Portraits Illustrating Living With Cancer

In 2003, I was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer.  It has been a long and sometimes difficult experience.  As an artist, I have the outlet to journey my life and critical events in paintings.  These self portraits depict my feelings about dealing with and living with cancer.

Self Portrait/Survivor 

8 x 10", Acrylic on canvas

  January 2008

This is a self-portrait of my nude torso, showing my scars.  I have a long one going through my abdomen, from hip to hip.  That is where the doctor took the tissue, muscle and veins to reapply to my right breast, which was removed in the mastectomy.  My left breast was reduced to match the size of my newly formed right breast.  I was told everything would be done in one surgery, but after the first one, which lasted 15 hours, when I came out of anesthesia, the doctor told me he couldn’t finish everything and it would require one more surgery.  After awakening from the second surgery, he told me he didn’t have time to fashion a nipple on the right breast, and it would take a third surgery.  At this point, I was so tired of surgeries and recuperating, I refused.  So I never got the nipple for my right breast.  I believe my purpose in painting this self-portrait was to come to terms with, and accept, my new body.  But I still had a sense of modesty and embarrassment, so painted it with a sense of anonymity, not painting my face.

Hope   

22 x 28", Oil on canvas 

  February 2008

I painted this right after I finished chemo, radiation, and surgeries.  I am wearing the pink and yellow rubber cancer bracelets that were so popular at the time, so I called it, “Hope”.

Fight Like A Girl  

  16 x 20", Acrylic on canvas 

  August 2012

After my initial diagnosis, I underwent 2 years of arduous treatment, then stayed in remission for 6 years.  In 2009, the cancer returned to my bones.  Right after that, it spread to my lungs and liver as well.  My doctor advised me to undergo chemotherapy again.  I dreaded it, because it was so painful and miserable the first time, but I told the doctor I was determined to kick the cancer to the curb, so was willing to do whatever was necessary.  I wanted to paint a self-portrait that illustrated that intention and resolve.  I included the armor and wings to show that I felt I was fighting on the side of the angels, fighting the good fight.  My doctor told me later he liked the composition because it showed me in both dark and light, reflecting both sides of living with cancer, and that my port-a-cath was in the light; as if to portray that it was part of my arsenal in fighting the cancer.

Self Portrait  

 20 x 24", Acrylic on canvas

  February 2013

I participated in a metastatic breast cancer support group arranged by my doctor.  At one session, we were discussing what it felt like living with cancer, and I suggested it was like living under the sword of Damocles.  The image stayed in my head for a while, until I became motivated to paint another self-portrait.  I am sitting on a throne with cushions to recline upon, to illustrate my good life.  But all the while a dagger hangs precariously tied with a string, ready to fall at any moment.  This represents the danger and ever present threat that the cancer could become active again at any time and over take my body.  The red heart necklace I am wearing represents my hope, showing that I have not given up the fight.

What Lies In Wait

   24 x 36",  Acrylic on canvas

February 2014

This painting started with a comment I made to my doctor.  We were discussing my current medication because I was having bad side effects from it.  He didn’t want to take me off it, though, because he was afraid the cancer would become active again.  I told him, “I know the cancer is at the door, and I don’t want to open it, even a little bit, to let it in.”  So we left the medication as it was (at that time) and the phrase starting knocking around in my head.  I wanted this painting to have a lighter feel, like a 1950’s horror movie poster or comic book cover.  But I also included the clock, showing that I was aware my time may be running out.  Also this painting reflects the compression garments I started wearing, due to having recently developed lymphedema as a result of my surgery back in 2003.

The Waiting Game 

     24 x 36",  Acrylic on canvas   

  December 2015 

This looks like a really dark theme, but I think it's more hopeful than that. What I am trying to convey is that 12 years ago, I feel like I was given a death sentence. But one can live for years on Death Row. The infusion line ends up being connected to a phone, like a line to the governor's. To me, it is a metaphor for chemo granting my appeals, reprieves and stays of execution. I am holding a shoe, waiting for it to drop, which would signify all my appeals have been exhausted; my time is up.  A friend asked me if because I am holding the shoe, that means I have control over when it drops, that is, that I can say when my time is up.  I replied I had not thought of it that way, it was simply the easiest way for me to compose the painting.  The truth of it is, if the shoe drops, it is because it is time for it to drop, it will not be because I have let go of it. The box on the tray next to me is a roach motel, a reference to the joke I frequently make about my being a cockroach; you can't kill me that easily.  The name of the painting also refers to the amount of waiting I do while undergoing treatment.  I sit and wait as the chemo drips into my body, which is sometimes excruciatingly slow.  I wait to see how my body will react to the chemicals, and I wait for scans and results to see what the outcome is.