Deborah Padfield is a visual artist specialising in lens based media and inter-disciplinary practice and research within Fine Art and Medicine. She is currently a Teaching Fellow and Honorary Research Associate at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (where she also received her PhD). She has collaborated extensively with clinicians and patients exploring the value of visual images to clinician-patient interactions and the communication of pain. In 2001 her collaboration with Dr Charles Pither at St Thomas’ Hospital, led to a touring exhibition, pilot study and book, Perceptions of Pain.
Her recent collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and facial pain clinicians and patients from UCLH led to several exhibitions, symposia and the current UCL CHIRP funded project Pain: speaking the threshold. She lectures and exhibits nationally and internationally, most recently at the Houston Center for Photography, USA, the 16th World Congress of Anaesthesiologists in Hong Kong, and the Association of Medical Humanities Conference, Greenwich, London. She co-organised the Encountering Pain Conference at UCL this July which brought together leading academics, clinicians, patients and artists to share insights and stimulate discussion. She is the recipient of a number of awards including, Sciart Research Award, UCL Arts in Health Award, the UCL Provosts Award for Public Engagement 2012, British Pain Society Artist of the Year 2012 and a UCL Public Engagement Beacon Bursary 2015.
Deborah Padfield will be speaking on her interpretation of ‘The art of anatomy, the beauty of health and art as therapy‘ in a group session with Michael Baum and Dr Alan Bates, which will be followed by a panel discussion. Padfield will bring her interpretation of the existing interplay between contemporary art and medical practice, drawing upon her work that has used visual image to improve the communication of chronic pain.
Reforming Anatomy 