Why women are applying gold paint to their scars in the name of art

Stripped nearly naked and with gold paint applied to parts of her body, Dr Liz Murray looks like she may be re-enacting a scene from the Bond movie Goldfinger. But the former A&E doctor and hero of the pandemic has a very serious message to convey – the gold paint traces the lines of scars she’s gained from a dozen or so operations during a gruelling decade of ill-health.

Liz and 100 other women are posing with their scars on show for a new health exhibition called Scars of Gold, running now until May 17. Their photos are a vivid illustration of how they’ve come through devastating health traumas.

“It was actually quite nerve-wracking to pose for the photo,” admits Liz, 37. “It is less of a body image issue, but more the idea of taking a physical step of turning a scar which represents so much trauma and representing it as something beautiful. It was actually quite a profound experience.”

The Scars of Gold campaign is Liz’s brainchild and based on the Japanese art of Kintsugi, in which broken items are repaired and their cracks painted gold as a way to find beauty in imperfection. Kintsugi featured in a storyline in the final episode of Call the Midwife in March.

But there’s a sad story behind Liz’s triumphant photo, which is about her own battles with ill-health and the heartbreaking decision she had to make in 2023 to give up her career as an A&E doctor.

“I had lots of operations for endometriosis that caused bowel and bladder damage and then got diagnosed with lupus,” she explains. “I’d been a doctor for ten years, and I had to keep taking time off because I had six miscarriages and IVF and then a premature birth by C-section where I nearly died.

“My son Noah was born premature in 2019 by emergency C-section and I haemorrhaged and had a bit of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] afterwards because they didn’t think he was going to survive, essentially.”

As a result, the gold on Liz’s head is representative of mental health struggles after Noah’s birth.

Following Noah’s birth and after battling to save patients throughout the first year of the pandemic, the last straw came when Liz contracted Covid herself in 2021. “It really affected my immune system and I lost quite a lot of my hair and I was really, really unwell,” says Liz.

“I hit a point of realising that I couldn’t keep doing a clinical role as a doctor. I was broken, physically and mentally. I felt like I’d been shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. I didn’t see how I would ever even become a functional version of myself, let alone something stronger and more thriving.

“But when I did begin to recover, I saw the parallels with Kintsugi, which I’d known about from making art.” Liz is also a talented artist who sells her work.

“I was so covered in scars myself and I always tried to hide them and then I just thought about applying Kintsugi to humans as a way of showing that many people have scars. What comes from gaining these scars is empowerment and strength.”

In Liz’s case, she knitted herself back together by founding a charity that helps patients facing serious health battles.

Called Mortal and Strong, it helps people in the prime of life aged 18 to 65 cope with serious and scary medical diagnoses by offering a one-stop shop to signpost them to support services and provide support and pastoral care.

“Citizens Advice is there to guide people with all the practical stuff of adulting, like housing and finances,” explains Liz. “One in three people in that age group will face a serious illness yet there is no service like that for health.”

Scars of Gold is Mortal and Strong’s first campaign to highlight inequities in women’s health. It supports women who feel they were let down by the NHS during treatment.

“A significant number of women in our campaign were medically gaslighted and belittled at their initial presentation, meaning that their diagnosis was so late they had progressed to secondary cancer,” says Liz.

“One woman’s breast cancer symptoms were missed for six months and was secondary by the time someone took her seriously.

“Our gynaecological health stories have a collective narrative of it taking up to 10 to 15 years to get a diagnosis, with many of the women then being infertile and needing a hysterectomy and losing the opportunity for children.

“We’ve also had many women have their symptoms dismissed as mental health problems who actually had severe underlying autoimmune conditions.”

Liz’s unique dual perspective as a doctor and patient helps her understand both sides. “Having experienced the health system as a patient, I’ve seen where things have gone wrong and where the failings are.”

Mortal and Strong provides patient feedback to the NHS and works with medical schools where patient experiences have for too long not been included in medical training.

“Doctors often have no clue about the gaps in care and where to signpost patients,” says Liz. “They don’t even know what charities exist. Bridging that gap and providing patient support needs to improve.”

Mortal and Strong also aims to provide support for the rarer health conditions. “The top three cancers – breast, lung and prostate – get a lot of attention, but the rest don’t,” says Liz. “With Mortal and Strong, patients have a centralised place for many diagnoses and it also covers universal themes like, for example, grief or the impact of a diagnosis on fertility or palliative care. They’re the same path regardless of what the underlying diagnosis is.”

Despite Mortal and Strong helping ‘knit’ Liz back together and provide her with a new career focus, she still faces health challenges.

Liz catches infections easily and often uses a walking stick due to pains in her hips and other joints, with doctors currently investigating if she’s got the inflammatory disorder Behçet’s Disease as well as lupus.

At home in Norfolk she’s a single mother to Florence, ten, and Noah, now six. “Noah’s got autism,” says Liz. “He’s high-functioning and very good at maths, so he’s like a little Rainman. He’s got a few sensory issues, but he’s doing fairly okay.”

And the work she’s done on the charity so far is unpaid. “I do other work on the side, such as speaking work or artwork such as medical illustrations,” says Liz. “I said to myself that I could commit a couple of years to this for free and just continue doing side projects on the side to support myself.

“But the irony is now I probably work more than I did at the hospital, because I can do it from home.” She admits that giving up medicine was hard. “I miss being a doctor terribly,” she admits. “I loved working with patients. Working in A&E during Covid was one of the most challenging experiences professionally, but it was one of the most rewarding because it was such a privilege to be in a position to do something helpful.”

She adds that people thought she was “bonkers” to walk away from medicine after ten years. “But recognising that the career was simply not compatible with my health was so liberating,” says Liz. “You can’t force situations on your body if you have a health condition.

“The more you work with your body and listen to it, the more empowered you become and are able to thrive.” A glowing testimonial from a precious mortal determined to achieve a gold standard of healthcare for all.

The Scars of Gold exhibition is on until May 17, 2025 at The Sidings at Waterloo Station, London SE1 7BH. Tickets available at eventbrite.co.uk