A spine grown into a bonsai, a spine with fins, two carp circling the lower back, a woman holding her own skeleton at arm’s length: for orthopaedics and rheumatology, physiotherapy and osteopathy.
Bonsai Vertebra began with a sentence I heard in a physiotherapy practice: “the spine is sculpted, it never quite straightens”. The bonsai came straight after. A thirteen-year-old girl learns she has scoliosis at a school check-up; she is fitted with a brace and told she will grow up with her curve; for a long time she refuses to look at her own back. A bonsai is not about correcting the tree; it follows the direction the tree takes. In the painting, a jade-green spine has become its trunk.
Carpe Diem came from an X-ray I stared at for too long one evening: two carp settled into it, as if the spine were a riverbed. It tells of a physiotherapist of thirty-eight, woken every night by low back pain, whose doctor tells her to keep moving. Aurum Femina began with a sentence heard in a rheumatology corridor: “I didn’t know my bones could grow old without me.” A woman of sixty-two fractured her wrist in a fall in her kitchen, and the X-ray showed osteoporosis that had been settling in for years.
Three other spines are about something other than bone. Carpal Spine, an 80 × 80 cm original at €2,600, sends a golden spine upstream among the koi, for multiple sclerosis. Ayame’s Spine and The Girl Spine show women from behind, their spines bare; one is about bipolar disorder, the other about leukaemia. The prints are signed and numbered by hand, 20 per size, at €300 in 40 × 40 cm and €450 in 60 × 60 cm; Ayame’s Spine, a portrait format, comes in 40 × 60 cm at €400.
scoliosis
A jade-green spine has become the trunk of a bonsai, in its pot by a window. It began with a sentence I heard in a physiotherapy practice: “the spine is sculpted, it never quite straightens”. It is about scoliosis, and a teenage girl learning to live with her curve. For a physiotherapist, or a spinal surgeon who treats teenagers.
bipolar disorder
A woman seen from behind, in a blue flowered kimono with red flowers in her bun, shows her bare spine and ribs. She wears the kimono like armour, and yet it is her back, the most exposed part of her, that she turns to us. It is about bipolar disorder, and about loving someone the illness keeps carrying elsewhere. The only spine in 40 × 60 cm, at €400, for a psychiatrist or a spinal surgeon.
leukaemia
A young blonde woman with blue roses in her hair turns her back to us; under her blue sash, the skeleton of her back appears among the roses. In Japan the blue rose long stood for the impossible, the miracle that keeps you waiting. The work is for the young women leukaemia took too early, and it is a gift for a haematologist or an oncology team.
multiple sclerosis
A golden spine fitted with fins rises towards a burst of light in a night sky, among the koi. Like the carp swimming upstream, it climbs against all logic. I painted it thinking of multiple sclerosis, of relapses that take the body away and then give it back. An 80 × 80 cm original, for a neurologist or a spinal surgeon.
lower back pain
Two koi, one orange and one white, circle a lumbar spine against what looks like an X-ray. It is about ordinary low back pain, the kind that comes to bodies that carry other people all day, and about the advice the doctor gives: keep moving, every day. I picture it in a physiotherapist’s or an osteopath’s practice.
osteoporosis
A woman in a purple kimono holds the skull of her own skeleton at arm’s length, in a swirl of gold, and looks it in the face. It began with a sentence I heard in a rheumatology corridor: “I didn’t know my bones could grow old without me.” It is about osteoporosis, and it is the one I suggest for a rheumatologist.
Bonsai Vertebra, a spine grown into the trunk of a bonsai, is about scoliosis. For a gift from a whole department, Carpal Spine is an 80 × 80 cm original, a one-off piece at €2,600 with a certificate of authenticity.
Carpe Diem, two carp circling the lumbar spine, tells the story of a physiotherapist with back pain of her own. Bonsai Vertebra began with a sentence heard in a physiotherapy practice. In a waiting room, a 60 × 60 cm print at €450 reads from across the room.
Aurum Femina, a woman holding her own skeleton at arm’s length, is about osteoporosis. Carpe Diem, about low back pain, works too: €300 in 40 × 40 cm, or €380 in its black floater frame.
Most prints come in 40 × 40 cm (€300) and 60 × 60 cm (€450). Ayame’s Spine, a portrait format, comes only in 40 × 60 cm, at €400, or €480 in a black floater frame. Carpal Spine, the original, measures 80 × 80 cm.
No. The prints are signed and numbered by hand, and each edition stops at 20 copies per size. Carpal Spine is an oil on canvas, a one-off piece with its certificate of authenticity.
