Writing myself

Series

Photograph of an abstract expressionist painting on a large circular canvas, titled 'Binaries'. It is predominantly monochrome. The background layer is completely covered with grey and green-grey hues. Textural qualities have been captured in the acrylic paint including impressions made by deep brush strokes and gathered, layered paint. Black expressionist marks, created with a palette knife, scatter across the surface and begin to accumulate towards one side of the canvas. Some marks include waves of banded black and grey. The black marks are reminiscent of a murder of crows, with their onyx wings stretching and taking flight. The artwork rests on a light grey background with a small shadow on the lower half which reveals its three dimensional physicality.

Binaries. Acrylic on canvas, 40cm. February 2022. © Kimberley Burrows for Wellcome Collection.

I’m Caroline. My identity as a disabled person is shifting all the time and understanding myself is an ongoing process. Sometimes I’ll meet your expectations; sometimes I’ll defy them.

Could writing a column help? Could it let others into my embodied experience and reveal something of what it’s like to be disabled?

This series – publishing throughout 2022 – will document my life as I investigate how writing helps me and others make sense of being disabled. It’ll be an exploration of who I am and an invitation to experience my life, maybe even challenging you to think differently about disability and mental ill health.

Article

Performing my disability

Caroline Butterwick explores the idea of disability as performative, and the pressure to act out what we think others expect.

Article

The boundaries that shape my writing

While writing about her life can be enormously helpful, Caroline Butterwick needs to regularly reassess her boundaries. Here she explores the line between what’s public and what’s private, and how porous that can be.

Article

Walk, interrupted

By listing all the things that get in her way, Caroline Butterwick wants to create an embodied experience of disability and convince you that inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.

Article

Writing back to authority

As she cuts up old doctors’ letters and uses them to compose absurd poems, Caroline Butterwick reflects on the catharsis of creation and proposes writing as a way to take back control.

Article

Why the truth is better than a happy ending

Caroline Butterwick often uses lived experience to inform her journalism, but she’s discovered a tension between the truth and stories that will sell.

Article

What writing myself has revealed

Caroline Butterwick talks to two creators about how lived experience feeds their art, and reflects on her own year of writing about her life.

About the contributors

Caroline Butterwick

Author

Caroline Butterwick is a writer, researcher and freelance journalist based in North Staffordshire. She’s currently working on a non-fiction book proposal, and her journalism has featured in a range of publications, including the Guardian, the i paper, Mslexia and Psychologies. She is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing that explores the power of memoir as a counternarrative to dominant models of disability, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council/Midlands4Cities.

Kimberley Burrows

Artist

@kimberleyburrowsart on Instagram

Kimberley is a blind abstract expressionist artist from Salford, Greater Manchester. An intuitive approach to her practice explores the complex themes of blindness, mental health, and art as therapy through performative mark-making. Kimberley is keen to understand the relationship between artist and medium, beyond the scope of vision, and the various health benefits that art can cultivate. Kimberley is a passionate advocate for accessibility and inclusion, which are both at the forefront of her social media presence. Kimberley, who will undertake a Master's degree in painting at the Royal College of Art, London later this year, has been featured in BBC Look North, Manchester Evening News, ITV News, the Daily Mail, and Marie Claire, among others.