Painting through pain ‒ Bennekerry artist Maeve uses painting as a coping tool

WHEN words failed to explain what her body was going through, Maeve Holmes picked up a paintbrush.

The Bennekerry artist was only 16 when she began painting as a way to cope with endometriosis, a chronic condition where tissue similar to the womb lining grows elsewhere in the body, causing severe pain. The condition has shaped almost every aspect of her life since.

“I started to paint to cope with it all, I suppose, and then I just never really stopped,” she said.

Last month that decision took her all the way to New York City, where she represented Ireland at an international exhibition about endometriosis and women’s health.

Maeve studied fine art painting and visual culture at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin and her recent show there was dedicated entirely to endometriosis and women’s health in Ireland.

Over time, her practice has expanded to explore the many ways the condition affects everyday life, from severe physical pain and social isolation to medical negligence and feelings of abandonment by the Irish health system.

Her own experience of seeking treatment has been far from straightforward.

“The first day my leaving certificate started, I actually flew to London to get the surgery I needed. There still aren’t that many specialists here,” she said.

She also recalls the toll that repeated medical examinations took on her as a young woman.

“You get all these medical exams and you feel a bit like your personal space is a bit violated because you’re so young and letting these older doctors examine you and then you’re still not getting answers,” she said.

When Maeve began her project about endometriosis for her final year in college, she worried that the work was too intimate to share, but the response surprised her.

“When I started doing the endometriosis project just last year for my final year, I felt like everything I was painting about was extremely personal and vulnerable. But then the more I posted about it online and more people saw it, it’s just not personal at all, really, because of the amount of women that I’ve had conversations with who feel exactly the same, even if they don’t have endometriosis in particular.” Through her paintings, Maeve hopes to tell the collective lived experience of endometriosis beyond her own story. She wants to create work that allows women to feel represented and understood within the art world, having been ignored within the medical world for too long.

She sees it as something of a responsibility.

“I can’t really imagine painting about anything else because it’s just so important right now. And if I can use anything I have, which, I suppose, is painting, to raise some sort of awareness about it, then I think that’s the right thing to do.” The painting Maeve exhibited in New York, titled ***Metallic Taste of Patience***, is the largest she has ever done and its scale is deliberate.

“This illness has taken up such a massive part of my life, so, I was like, I’ll just do something massive,” she said.

The work addresses physical pain, the loss of sport and social life, relationships, medical experiences ‒ and hope. Hope that is vital given that endometriosis affects an estimated one in ten women and girls around the world, according to the World Health Organisation.

“I was trying to express all the different ways in which endometriosis has affected my life ‒ my physical health, my personal life, my sports and interests – I can’t play sports anymore – and my friends and family, my relationships with the people around me. I suppose it has just changed everything. So I decided to paint a bit about that and depict the pain that I felt. Also around how I felt going into the hospital and getting all of these medical exams.” Woven through the painting is robotic and cyborg imagery, representing possible futures of less invasive medical care. The idea, Maeve explained, came from imagining a way out.

“I thought ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if I could replace all the parts of my body that are giving me trouble with robotic parts?’ So it was kind of nice to bring my imagination off into somewhere a bit more hopeful.” The cyborg elements act as an emotional counterweight to what Maeve acknowledges is otherwise “quite depressing” work.

Maeve’s journey to New York began with a message on Instagram from a US-based artist inviting her to take part in an exhibition organised by FLARE, a collective founded by four women with endometriosis.

“Initially, I thought it must be a scam,” she said, “and then, literally two months later, I was on my way to New York City.” FLARE describes itself as bringing art, lived experience, education and advocacy into conversations around endometriosis, creating a space for artists, writers and people living with chronic illness. It works through exhibitions, a journal, public conversations, publications and film with its first chapter opening in New York last month.

Over three days, 32 artists from 13 countries showed work in painting, print, sculpture and textiles, alongside panel discussions with women’s health professionals.

For Maeve, one of the highlights was hearing the same stories from different women diagnosed with endometriosis and the immediate sense of community among the participants.

“There was just already this baseline level of understanding with everyone and we could talk about the most intimate personal things and it wasn’t like talking to a stranger,” she said.

A second exhibition may be planned for next year. For now, Maeve is still taking it all in.

“I feel like I dreamt the whole thing to be honest.”