Lynn Paquin’s painting Trapped, now on display in The Warren Alpert Medical School, is a deeply personal creation. A woman, confined within the canvas, holds on to herself and provides some measure of comfort.
Paquin, a Newport-based artist, herself suffers from a chronic illness that, when not well-managed, can make her feel awful.
“She and the pose were imagined, but I believe she is recognizable to anyone who has been chronically ill,” Paquin says. “It can be lonely and scary.”
Paquin’s artwork, and by extension her story, is one of more than 40 submissions featured throughout March in Exploring Chronic Illness and Medicine Through Art, a new exhibit curated by the Gold Humanism Honor Society. The group hosted an opening event March 6, with paintings, sculptures, and other works displayed throughout the first-floor atrium. Paquin and other artists from Brown and the Providence area share their personal narratives as part of an effort that the student group hopes will “bridge the societally perceived divide between doctors and patients and center humanism in medicine.”
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