Scream

by Elaina Ford (UK)

“I found when doing Headspace mindfulness, that when they said “let your mind do what I want”, I found myself silent screaming… I guess at the whole enormity of the entirety of the cancer. This made me think of The Scream by Edvard Munch, so this is my take on it. Noting that it’s my first use of watercolours!

The black hole of the scream matches the breasts, which is also what my implants look like on the ultrasound. The sunset is pinky purple, partly as I simply like these colours more than oranges (as in the original), but also as a nod to the pink cancer ribbons.

I didn’t add hair, not because I lost it all (I cold capped quite successful through chemo) but partly because I don’t know how to do hair in water colours! And it’s not in the original The Scream. I also didn’t include hair because – I know it might sound silly – although the cold capping was successful, I did still lose hair, and I’m still dealing with those consequences of regrowth two years later. But I felt I didn’t get much sympathy for this as, trying to be supportive of course, people highlighted the positives.”