Using Art to Explain Pain, an Invisible Illness
An Interview with Mark R. Collen
| The PainEDU team met Mark R. Collen, the creator and project manager of PainExhibit.com, at a recent Alliance of State Pain Initiatives meeting. The website provides an online gallery for people with pain to share their artwork as a way to communicate about their pain. The site educates the public and health care providers about the experience of pain and suffering. |
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Questions
1: Are you an artist yourself?
 2: What has been your experience with chronic pain?
3: How were you able to progress from your original idea to the website as it is today?
4: How did you pick the eight different theme galleries for the collection?
5: What kind of responses have you had to the art in the exhibit? I personally found one of your works helpful to me as I’ve been trying to understand neuropathic pain better. While I liked “CPII”, a plaster sculpture of a foot with steel blades protruding, several of my colleagues said it was so painful to them that they couldn’t look at it.
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Evelyn Corsini, M.S.W.:
Are you an artist yourself? Mark R. Collen: I never started calling myself an artist until after I established the website. I have a BS in Agronomy and used to work in the insurance industry. I began to create the PAIN Exhibit in 2001. I now serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy. Many of the works of art on the site have been on the cover of that publication, and the journal Pain. My goal is to educate health care providers and the public about chronic pain through art. In addition, I have published many articles in professional journals and pain publications. 
EC: What has been your experience with chronic pain? MC: In 1995, I had an accident and herniated a lumbar disc. The disc went directly into the nerve root on my left side, causing severe neuropathic pain down my left leg. I had surgery, which was initially helpful, but then failed due to the growth of scar tissue. I believe I was under-treated for my pain for many years.
Eventually, I found a doctor who was able to help me, but when he retired, I needed to start working with a new doctor. I found that I had a very hard time helping her to understand my pain. I had been creating art as a form of catharsis, to help me deal with my pain and severe depression. When I showed her my art, I felt she really understood me better, and realized that art was superior to words as a way to communicate my pain. I decided I wanted to use art to give a voice to people who might otherwise suffer in silence, to use it to educate health care providers and the public.
EC: How were you able to progress from your original idea to the website as it is today? MC: It has been a long and hard struggle, and every day it is a challenge to keep the site going. My first thought was to reach out to people with chronic pain to collect their art, and then use it as an educational traveling display. This was too ambitious a plan, but I had the good fortune to find a volunteer, James Gregory, who knew about website development and design, and he helped me set up PainExhibit.com.
I designed a flier for placement in pain doctors’ offices, asking patients to send me images of their artwork for consideration. It took me a long time to find a physician to support me and help me gain access to others who treated chronic pain. I also tried to communicate with as many people as I could through pain-related websites. The collection continues to grow as new submissions arrive. There are no products attached to the pain exhibit, though James Gregory and I have a self-published book called “Selections from the PAIN Exhibit”.
EC: How did you pick the eight different theme galleries for the collection? MC: It was very challenging to determine how to organize the art, and it took a group of individuals to help me with this task. Some themes naturally stood out. We felt it was important for the website not to just give the impression of hopeless, but to portray suffering and overcoming suffering. The nine gallery themes are:
- Portraits of pain
- Suffering
- Pain visualized
- But you look so normal
- Isolation and imprisonment
- Unconditional love
- Hope and transformation
EC: What kind of responses have you had to the art in the exhibit? I personally found one of your works helpful to me as I’ve been trying to understand neuropathic pain better. While I liked “CPII”, a plaster sculpture of a foot with steel blades protruding, several of my colleagues said it was so painful to them that they couldn’t look at it. MC: I believe that ignorance is the cause of under-treatment of pain, and that education is the only cure. I consistently receive emails from people with pain, thanking me for the website. They state they feel less alone and isolated. I know that health educators worldwide use PainExhibit.com art images to educate others about chronic pain. That is the continuing mission of the site and I welcome any support I can receive that will help me to keep the site going.
To view the website go to: http://www.painexhibit.com.
To view “CPII” go to: http://www.painexhibit.com/ag213_Collen.
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