I’m Elizabeth Manuel, and I’m now 55 and live on the South coast close to the sea.

After doing a ceramics art O level, I always retained an interest in art, but as a busy barrister, author, Judge and  mother of two young children I never had the time to do anything creative for myself for the next 20 years.

Life was good, full, and fulfilled but in September 2011 I collapsed while training for the London Marathon which I was running for St Johns Ambulance as President of Portsmouth St Johns. I had a GCS coma scale of 3, and my family were told that I would be unlikely to survive the night as my chances were less than 10%.

I had suffered from a subarachnoid brain haemorrhage and stroke aged 46 and needed immediate brain surgery to clip a ruptured giant aneurysm. 

I remained in a coma for 2 weeks but when I came to, it was apparent that my devastating brain injury had left me paralysed and mostly blind with a condition called homonymous hemianopia which meant I had lost the entirety of my left field of vision and some of my right field. I am 65% blind in each eye, with long and short sight otherwise.

I left hospital with no rehab or treatment and had to teach myself to walk again, but I was left badly disabled and was unable to return to work.

A year later I was at last sent away for rehab to the Oliver Zangwill  centre in Ely, and had 18 weeks of residential rehab.  We were asked to do a brain injury project to show that we understood our brain injury.  I knew that I wanted to paint my brain and painted my before-haemorrhage brain, my haemorrhage-brain, and my post-haemorrhage brain.  

After 30 years as an advocate and public speaker, whilst I couldn’t see well and I had lost so much of my previous life I knew I wanted to increase knowledge, awareneness, and education about sight-loss and disability.  

I became one of the first members of the RNIB Customer Council, and spoke on their Finding your Feet courses. I went on to give regular talks about my story which raised much-needed funds. 

In addition I have worked in health research as a Patient Participant throughout the last 8 years particularly in the field of Stroke research and also with Professor Fiona Rowe of Liverpool University in the field of sight-loss on her VISIBLE committee, and I am a Patient Research Ambassador at my local hospital. 

In 2017 I became the first person with a neurological condition to become a trustee on the Board of the Brain & Spine Foundation. 

Whilst I have lost all of my previous life, my job/ my marriage and family/ my independence and will never drive, and need a long-guide cane to get around, I was blessed to have survived and have travelled widely and done many interesting things post stroke.   I now live with the prospect of more brain surgery, but I look forward to grasping each opportunity I come across, and living as full-a-life as possible. 

 Through my charity work I have had the opportunity to exhibit my brain paintings at the 2017 Stroke Forum in Liverpool, and at the UCLH Museum of Art for their brain exhibition in 2018. 

 I have since my stroke undertaken a number of art courses starting with getting my City & Guilds in art and painting in 2012, and also doing various acryllic, landscape and portrait painting courses with the Joe Daisy Studio.  I learnt early on in my recovery that the mindful skills used in painting where choosing the paint colour, consistency, and texture is therapy in itself, as is the ability to create anything. 

Through Lockdown 2020/21 I have frequently done classes on-line, and this has undoubtedly been something to look forward too in an otherwise difficult time, and I am continuing to learn with every painting. 

I have been lucky to be asked to work with the amazing Lyndsey Whitelaw who has sent me three of her pieces of art and I am literally painting what I see of her work.  Clearly,  my version is from a mostly blind amateur, but I hope the end results will be a window into what I as a person with a dense left Hemianopia actually sees of the world. 

In 2019 I starred in a short documentary filmed by the London Film Academy about my sight-loss called World out of Reach and in January 2020 starred in a VR film about the need for community rehab called  Some inattention on the left, commissioned by the Chartered Society of physiotherapists; Royal College of Occupational therapists; and Sue Ryder, to support the research that they had undertaken about the importance of community rehab, and this was shown to Parliament on the 26th February 2020 to lobby for better treatment.  The films are a clearly a different form of art but are an extension of my story educating and informing, just as my paintings have. 

Elizabeth is creating a series of artworks to represent her experience of her brain haemorrhage. She is also teaming up with Lindsey Whitelaw. Lindsey has shown Elizabeth pieces of her artwork, and Elizabeth has described what she sees when she looks at the work, Lindsey has painted this response.

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