Each artwork offers a space for reflection. They give a voice to the everyday struggles that accompany health challenges. Art, through both the process of looking and that of creation offers healing. The artists hope that in these images you find connection and joy.
This exhibition brings together eight international artists united by a shared belief in art as healing. Each draws on their own experience, ranging from sudden hospitalisations to lifelong disabilities. The works explore a range of media from crayon on paper, oil paint and printmaking through to dressmaking and mixed media.
Curator Charlie Kirkham, brought the group together after connecting with the artist through both art and heart patient networks. Featuring voices from the UK, USA and Australia the show celebrates art’s ability to cross geographical boundaries and speak to the universal experience of physical fragility.
The artists explore their experience with surgery, hospitalisation and chronic conditions through varied means. Who could forget the rib cage dress from Caz Wilson (Great British Sewing Bee in 2025)?
This zip-up dress, inspired by her experience of heart valve replacement surgery, celebrates life after scarring. It is a beautiful, wearable artwork, shown here against an operating theatre sign. The dress unzips to reveal the heart itself.
Ashley Bravin’s Disability Alphabet explores disability, identity and how to communicate these realities to others. In her series everyday objects take on new meaning. The bed, once a place for sleep, becomes a recovery space, a home office, or sometimes a place of confinement. Her art helps viewers see the daily shifts that chronic illness brings. She used her own service dog as model for ‘S is for Service Dog’.
Iluá Hauck da Silva combines drawing and digital technology to reflect on a life-threatening infection in her petrous bone (at the base of the skull). This led to sixth nerve palsy which affects eye movement and vision. Her pieces blend anatomical imagery with religious symbolism exploring the experience from the perspective of both bone and eye. The work was further developed during a residency with the Royal College of Optometrists.
Coventry-based artist Prashant Kansara works in both drawing and film to navigate life with bipolar disorder. In these vibrant crayon drawings he references Henri Matisse. His two reflective portraits, created especially for the exhibition, use colour to soothe. He invites viewers to reflect how art can bring peace in times of internal and external turbulence.
Working in lithography and collage, Australin artist Kathryn Lean draws on her challenges with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a heart rhythm condition. In Wired Heart she collages ECG cables onto the print, capturing the overlap between medical reality and creative expression. She created it in two parts, the lithograph print was hand carved, inked and printed. Each one is a unique, intricate creation, much like each individual patient. The bright ECG emphasises the medicalisation process. It reflects the feeling that the heart becomes separated from the self during treatment. Her collage addresses the tension between body and spirit in medical settings.
Glasgow-based painter and printmaker Sarmed Mizra grounds himself in the natural world. As a sailplane glider pilot he has viewed the earth from above, in contrast his daily meditation practice is at ground level among the trees. His intricate paintings of leaves encourage us to pause and notice the everyday wonder around us. His simple philosophy is this: the way we attend to the world shapes how we live in it and how we leave it. He invites you to look closer at the beauty around you. A fallen leaf, a swaying branch, the birdsong behind the traffic.
California-based performance artist and painter Ruby Vartan grew up in war-torn Lebanon. She uses her own body as a paintbrush, working in fabric, paint, charcoal and ink. In Light through the Cracks she celebrates the resilient female spirit. Her practice rejoices in the power of movement to process trauma. She uses the forward movement of the body to reflect on physically moving forward into healing. Bringing in figurative elements alongside abstract, emotional statements this mixed media work contains multiple layers of meaning. It is a message of hope, that the light will always find cracks to shine through no matter how dark it is right now.
In her “Heart Heroes” series Charlie Kirkham portrays people living with implanted cardiac devices such as pacemakers and ICDs. Many are young patients who are navigating heart conditions alongside navigating adulthood. These sensitive portraits trace journeys through different stages of heart conditions, including life after transplantation. They reveal unexpected truths, how someone may shift from being a “heart patient” to managing immunosuppression post transplant. In Hyacinth Heart Transplant she includes a small hyacinth tucked into a model’s hair, honouring a friend lost along the way. Her second portrait Swapping Bikes for Cameras is of a former competitive cyclist adapting to life with a pacemaker, one cycling-short brace is lowered to avoid pressure on the device. It reflects the sense of life before and after complete heart block. In this case cycling was restricted and the model discovered photography, using creativity to navigate a new lifestyle.
Each artwork offers a space for reflection. They give a voice to the everyday struggles that accompany health challenges. Art, through both the process of looking and that of creation offers healing. The artist hope that in these images you find connection and joy.
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