“Pain is a violent lover”: Daisy Lafarge on the paintings she made when overwhelmed by pain | culture

DIzzy Lafarge was lying on the floor in excruciating pain when she began her final painting. The severe injury, combined with a sudden deterioration in her health, left her unable to sit upright, while brain fog and exhaustion made reading and writing impossible. So the award-winning novelist and poet returned to her art school training, using the energy and materials she had to create impressionistic paintings of her surroundings—her cat Uisce, her boyfriend’s PlayStation console—along with disturbing images of shuttered gardens and decaying flowers.

“Painting pictures was a way to cope with the pain,” says the 34-year-old. “I was on my living room floor in pain for a few hours, but I wanted to make use of that time. I’ve always been fascinated by artists and writers who turn constraints into formal constraints. I see the paintings as my attempt to do that.”

The works are made using basic materials: “very cheap” paper, paints and brushes, as well as kinesiology tape, an adhesive that Lafarge, who has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, uses to provide support to joints and ligaments. Since the tape has to be cut in very specific ways, it leaves behind a distinctive butterfly-shaped residue that Lafarge repurposes into decorative elements. The watercolors will be accompanied by a series of poems inspired by William Blake’s novel The Sick Rose and the 13th century text The Romance of the Rose, drawing on the principles of courtly love to tell the allegorical story of a relationship in which pain is described as a lover’s “intoxicating, and at times extremely violent.”

The paintings and poetry will be on display this month at Dundee Contemporary Arts Center as part of We Contain Multitudes, an exhibition bringing together the work of four artists with disabilities. Also featuring is Joe Longhurst, whose latest project was inspired by weeds, an unwanted but resilient plant; Andrew Gannon, who creates works modeled on casts of his left arm; and Nina Callow, whose highly textural, cocoon-like sculptures and drawings earned her the 2025 Turner Prize – the first time it has been awarded to an artist with a learning disability.

“I think it’s great that Nina won the Turner Prize,” Lafarge says. “I haven’t seen her work physically yet, but I love the way she takes up space, her bold physicality. I hope it leads to more inclusion of disabled artists. But I don’t want to be naively optimistic. I just find it very difficult to separate from the fact that disabled artists are disabled people. So, is this really a turning point, unless disabled people can afford to survive in this country? And it comes down to structural issues: are they able to heat their homes, pay wages Caretakers, and access to very basic things? It was an incredibly depressing time from that perspective, ceremonial representation without actual physical change is kind of meaningless.

For many people with disabilities, efforts to manage complex conditions and chronic pain are compounded by the bureaucratic hurdles they face to receive treatment and support. Lafarge, who lives in Glasgow, was unable to see an Ehlers-Danlos NHS specialist, as there is none in Scotland. Many of her paintings were painted while standing in long queues for adult disability payments, the Scottish equivalent of the personal independence payment. “When you’re trying to get support from these institutions, which are punitive in different ways, that can take a lot out of you as well. These processes can be very difficult.”

Lafarge says Lafarge’s welfare cuts last year were a “major assault” on disability rights, but she accepts progress will be made in certain areas, such as the increased use of access documents, as arts workers decide what adjustments they will require of a space, such as wheelchair ramps or regular breaks. “Most of the time now, fortunately, they will come back and say, ‘Yes.’ But sometimes they will say, ‘No, we can’t do that.’”

Lafarge hopes that exhibitions like We Contain Pluralism can challenge preconceived notions about artists with disabilities – and by extension people with disabilities. Its four artists represent a diverse range of conditions, and each addresses the topic of disability in a very different way. “One of the great things this show will come out of is people saying: ‘I wouldn’t have assumed the artist who made this was disabled’ – because it shouldn’t be obvious from the content.”

She hopes that her paintings and poems speak to people regardless of any physical ability. “You don’t have to be disabled to be able to participate in this work. It takes it down a notch.”

I’ve thought a lot about the concept of identity. “When I was first diagnosed, I didn’t really want to over-identify with the disease and say, ‘I’m a writer with this condition.’ I just wanted to be a writer, or I wanted to be an artist. There’s this pressure to outwardly identify with something that you might personally feel ambivalent about. That’s frustrating.”

She says disability should not be viewed as something apart from everyday life, or a separate category of personality. “People don’t realize that this work is about them, too,” Lafarge says. “Many people, whether through aging, injury or illness, will recognize something from that experience. We are one in four people. This is not unusual. This includes all of us.”