About this episode

Michael Ashcroft shares his journey of turning trauma from a life-altering surgery into award-winning art.

As a young man, engineer Michael Ashcroft was plagued by excruciating headaches, along with neck pain and a rushing sound in his ear. Eventually scans were made revealing a tumour the size of a tangerine behind his left ear. It required twelve hours of complex surgery and left Michael with temporary deafness in one ear, a lopsided face, limited swallowing and barely any capacity for speech. Seeing his face reflected in a hospital window he was appalled and at the same time profoundly moved. Half his face was in daylight, the handsome young man who had entered the hospital a few days before. The other half, in shade, looked to him like a monster. In an instant he had an overwhelming desire to capture that image, and to do that he would become a painter – drawing comparisons to the industrial artistic genius of L.S. Lowry. Michael talks to Dr Sian Williams about the challenges of recovery, and describes his determination to teach himself to paint. Producer: Tom Alban

People in this episode

Host: Dr Sian Williams

Guest: Michael Ashcroft

Topics covered

• trauma
• art
• recovery
• personal journey
• painting
• health

Keywords

• trauma
• art
• Michael Ashcroft
• recovery
• painting
• L.S. Lowry
• surgery
• personal story

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: BBC Radio 4

Books & works: L.S. Lowry

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