Now you see ME Now you don't
Other creative work exhibited
The work exhibited on this page is from those who did indivual work related to ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia and Long Covid
Ann
Paint by numbers has helped me since my M.E. diagnosis. I used to be constantly active and busy and finding something that I could be focused on when able, helped me to feel like I could still achieve something. It can take months to complete one painting. I now have 12 of them around my living room, all mostly bright colours. I spend a lot of my time in this one room. So they make me happy. This painting is of my dog that I lost 3 years ago. He was my little companion and protector, he followed me everywhere and when I got really ill he would lay either at the end of my bed or at the end of the sofa. I spent the first two years of my illness just moving backwards and forwards between the two. In fact my family got me a single bed which I had in my living room to make things easier and so that I didn’t have to try and walk up the stairs. I miss my dog every day but looking at my painting definitely helps.
Melanie Jones
I may look the same on the outside, but living with M.E. means feeling exhausted most of the time. Every activity uses precious energy, so most of my effort goes into simply getting through the day. Because M.E. is invisible, it is often misunderstood and sometimes dismissed as laziness or a mental illness, which adds stigma to an already difficult condition. However, I have learnt how to manage and still enjoy life my life in a very different way. The support of the M.E. group has been life-changing and reminds me that I am not alone.
One upon a time life was 'normal'
Something changed, 'normal life'
became impossible
I can still enjoy life at a slower pace.
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Martin
In simple terms, M.E is.a horrible illness. Much misunderstood and dismissed by many. The impact on me has been life changing. I was working as a plumber, fit and healthy and enjoyed being active. In one fail swoop it was all taken away from me. My art work shows how I went from enjoying my fitness, too being confined to my room and then to finding hope in my art work and others who continue to inspire me with theirs.
Kirsty Jamieson
Indeterminate sentence-
3D mixed media
This piece reflects the experience of living with ME/CFS and Long Covid. Inside a discarded cardboard box, a small bedroom contains a bedbound figure surrounded by tally marks. The confined space echoes a prison sentence with no known end, while the tally marks represent the loss of life caused by chronic illness.
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Michael Joelson
Michael entered a Long Covid Kids competition to design a poster to raise
awareness and promote understanding. He was absolutely thrilled to win!
I'm not fine
Haseena Hussain
I first created this geometric pattern in a short course with the School of Traditional Arts in 2021 before becoming unwell. The pattern is from a piece of tiling from the fountain at the Gayer-Anderson Museum, Cairo, Egypt. I have since returned to it at different stages of my recovery. There have been pauses between constructing and painting this pattern. I have experimented with the tessellated pattern, brushstrokes, dimensions, and colour combinations. It mirrors finding different ways of what fits in the moment. The journey with this piece reflects the nature of living with illness with a balance of doing and being, activity and rest.
Lewis Stockwell
The faces of M.E.
Charcoal, gouache, pigment ink on watercolour paper
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This piece started as a charcoal outline of a bed - with pillow shapes and sheet - framing the frontal, dominant figure looking directly at you. For many, a bed is a place of safety and sanctuary. For many with CFS-ME, a bed can feel safe and secure, similar to prison. As the semi-spontaneous charcoal lines progress and overlap, so too do the semi-formal and abstract faces and figures. These faces, along with block colour, line-and-wash (the process of applying layers of watercolour or gouache paint and then adding a pigment outline), and coloured pigment pens, offer the viewer insights into the varied and complex identities I, and many others, inhabit as a person with the life-limiting condition, CFS-ME.
My colour choice was inspired by the work of Tanzanian-born and Edinburgh-based artist Everlyn Nicodemus. Her work explores issues of oppression, racism, trauma and recovery. In The faces of M.E., the vivid colour choices represent various realities of living with CFS-ME: it is a powerful and arresting condition, it can change the way one sees, feels and experiences the world and while the lines may artificially separate shapes, colours and figures, the backdrop and context make a significant difference to the overall characterisation of the piece. Many of those living with CFS-ME have a life characterised by unexplained embodied symptoms that fundamentally influence the context and quality of their lives.
As more vibrant, thicker pigments overlie the layers of lighter gouache washes, the figures - impressionist and abstract - inhabit the central space, accompanied by floating shapes of colours, contrasting lines, and disfigured body parts, most notably the hands. These represent many aspects of unexplainable and uncomfortable emotional, physical and cognitive aspects associated with this hidden disability. While a defining feature of CFS-ME is being tired all of the time with unrefreshing sleep, it is a multi-system and autonomic nervous system disorder, without any single medical intervention and no cure. People with the condition live with, and are limited by, things like chronic and severe idiopathic pain, sensory sensitivity (such as light, sound, touch and smell), post-exertion malaise, rapid physical deconditioning, acute cognitive impairment (migraines and brain fog, to name just two) and poor nutrient absorption. In the last 10 years, coroners and doctors have finally begun to recognise that people die from the condition and not just singular physical symptoms; they have begun to record these deaths as caused by CFS-ME. It is a powerful, restrictive and debilitating condition, represented here by the wire fencing ME in.
Besides the stimuli to try to capture my experiences of living with CFS-ME, other inspirations for this artwork are L.S. Lowry (especially the Head of a Man), Grayson Perry, Picasso and historical artworks stolen in the late 1800s by the British Government from the city of Benin (Nigeria), many of which continue to be displayed as artefacts in the British Museum. Human and non-human actors steal artefacts and lives.
About the artist: Lewis Stockwell was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire and has been diagnosed with CFS-ME since 2018. He continues to work on his art practice while being a full-time lecturer in the Schools of Law and Education at the University of Hertfordshire. He has exhibited works in England and Scotland. In April 2025, Lewis was awarded his PhD in environmental aesthetics and education at Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh.