Daisy Lafarge's Artistic Response to Chronic Pain and Disability Challenges
When excruciating pain left award-winning novelist and poet Daisy Lafarge unable to sit upright or engage in her usual writing practice, she turned to an unexpected creative outlet. The 34-year-old artist found herself lying on her living room floor, grappling with a severe injury and a sudden worsening of her connective tissue disorder, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. With brain fog and fatigue making reading and writing impossible, Lafarge drew upon her art school training to create a series of impressionistic paintings using whatever materials she had available.
Creating Art Amidst Physical Limitations
"Making the paintings was a way of coexisting with pain," explains Lafarge. "I was on my living room floor in agony for several hours, but I wanted to extract something meaningful from that difficult time." Her artistic process became a deliberate response to physical constraints, transforming limitations into creative opportunities. The resulting works feature intimate depictions of her immediate surroundings—including her cat Uisce and her boyfriend's PlayStation controller—alongside more unsettling imagery of enclosed gardens and decaying flowers.
Lafarge employed basic, affordable materials for her creations: inexpensive paper, paints, and brushes. Most notably, she incorporated kinesiology tape—an adhesive she uses daily to support her joints and ligaments due to her Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. The tape requires precise cutting, leaving behind distinctive butterfly-shaped remnants that Lafarge repurposed as decorative elements within her watercolour compositions.
Poetic Inspiration and Exhibition Details
The visual artworks will be accompanied by a poetic cycle inspired by William Blake's The Sick Rose and the 13th-century text The Romance of the Rose. Lafarge's poetry draws upon principles of courtly love to craft an allegorical narrative where pain becomes characterized as an "intoxicating, sometimes quite violent lover." Both her paintings and poetry will feature in the exhibition We Contain Multitudes at Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre from 7 February to 26 April.
This significant exhibition brings together four artists with disabilities, including Jo Longhurst, whose latest project draws inspiration from bindweed—an unwanted yet resilient plant; Andrew Gannon, who creates work modelled on casts of his left arm; and Nnena Kalu, whose highly textural, cocoon-like sculptures and drawings earned her the 2025 Turner Prize—marking the first time the prestigious award has been presented to an artist with learning disabilities.
Structural Challenges Facing Disabled Artists
While Lafarge celebrates Kalu's Turner Prize achievement as potentially opening doors for greater inclusion of disabled artists, she maintains a cautiously realistic perspective. "I don't want to be naively optimistic," she states. "It remains incredibly difficult to disentangle the fact that disabled artists are, first and foremost, disabled people living in challenging circumstances."
The artist highlights fundamental structural issues that continue to affect disabled individuals across the UK. "Is this truly a turning point unless disabled people can afford basic survival in this country?" she questions. "This comes down to whether they can heat their homes, pay their carers, and access essential services. Celebratory representation without accompanying material change ultimately feels somewhat meaningless."
Navigating Healthcare and Support Systems
For many disabled individuals, managing complex conditions and chronic pain is compounded by bureaucratic obstacles when seeking treatment and support. Lafarge, who resides in Glasgow, has never been able to consult an Ehlers-Danlos specialist through the NHS, as no such specialists currently practice in Scotland. She created many of her paintings while waiting on lengthy call queues for adult disability payment—Scotland's equivalent to personal independence payment.
"When you're attempting to secure support from institutions that can feel punitive in various ways, that process itself drains considerable energy," Lafarge explains. "These administrative procedures can prove incredibly difficult to navigate while managing chronic health conditions."
Changing Perceptions Through Artistic Diversity
Lafarge hopes exhibitions like We Contain Multitudes can challenge preconceptions about disabled artists and, by extension, disabled people more broadly. The four participating artists represent diverse conditions and approach the subject of disability through distinctly different artistic lenses.
"One positive outcome from this exhibition would be for visitors to remark, 'I wouldn't have assumed the artist who created that work is disabled,'" says Lafarge. "The disability shouldn't necessarily be obvious from the artistic content itself."
She emphasizes that her paintings and poems should resonate with audiences regardless of physical ability. "You don't need to be disabled to engage meaningfully with this work," Lafarge asserts. "To suggest otherwise would diminish its broader relevance and artistic merit."
Identity, Experience, and Shared Humanity
Lafarge has reflected extensively on concepts of identity since her diagnosis. "Initially, I resisted over-identifying with my condition," she recalls. "I simply wanted to be recognized as a writer or artist, without the qualifying label. There exists pressure to outwardly identify with something you might feel personally ambivalent about, which can prove frustrating."
She argues that disability shouldn't be perceived as something removed from everyday experience or as a separate category of personhood. "People often don't realize that this artistic work concerns them as well," Lafarge observes. "Many individuals will, through aging, injury, or illness, eventually come to understand aspects of this experience. We represent one in four people—this isn't unusual. These issues implicate all of us in society."
