Liz Atkin - Critical Voices 2015

Critical Voices (CV) is part of a growing movement to understand medicine, health and wellbeing as subjects which demand ethical judgements, empathy and wisdom, with insights from science and the arts. By bringing together health professionals, patients, researchers, artists, writers, campaigners and the wider public they aim to provoke challenging insights, conversation and debate on some of the most critical areas of our lives.

Interview with Liz

In July, Critical Voices hosted Liz Atkin, a visual artist based in London, who has been challenged by skin picking disorder for more than 20 years. In September last year we featured a post about an interview by BBC radio’s Felicity Finch with Liz Atkin, who talks about her disorder and the impact her art has had on her journey to recovery. According to Liz, her art has helped her heal in a very huge and powerful way. She has been able to express very deep feelings that she previously did not have the language to express.

Featured at CV

Here we find Liz Atkin again describing in detail how her background in dance and theatre and her innate creativity evolved into a vehicle that allowed her to confront the condition to harness creative repair and recovery. In this presentation she talks the audience through some intimate artworks, photographs and performances exploring the body-focused repetitive behaviour of skin picking.