Pain is a violent lover': Daisy Lafarge on the paintings she made when floored with agony

"Daisy Lafarge was lying on the floor in excruciating pain when she started her latest paintings. A severe injury, coupled with a sudden worsening of her health, had left her unable to sit upright, while brain fog and fatigue made reading and writing impossible. So the award-winning novelist and poet fell back on her art school training, using the energy and materials she had to hand to create impressionistic paintings of her surroundings"

"I was on my living room floor in agony for a few hours, but I wanted to get something out of that time. I've always been fascinated by artists and writers who turn limitations into formal constraints. I see the paintings as my attempt at that. The works were made with basic materials: quite cheap paper, paints and brushes,"

Daisy Lafarge began painting while lying on the floor in excruciating pain after a severe injury and sudden health decline. Brain fog and fatigue prevented reading and writing, so she used art-school training to create impressionistic watercolours of her cat, a PlayStation controller and decaying enclosed gardens. She used cheap paper, paints, brushes and kinesiology tape remnants—butterfly-shaped pieces from tape used for joint support—which she repurposed as decorative elements. A poem cycle inspired by William Blake's The Sick Rose and the 13th-century Romance of the Rose accompanies the watercolours, framing pain as an intoxicating, sometimes violent lover. The works appear at Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre in We Contain Multitudes.

Read at www.theguardian.com