Annamaria Scaccia
Scars of Survivorship
Swollen acrylic on canvas
Artist Statement
I’ve been creating since childhood—crayon drawings, stick-figure doodles, Commodore 64 graphics. Over time, they evolved into charcoal sketches and acrylic paintings. Painting is where I find the most solace.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I used art to process it—to work through the peaks and valleys, the chaos and calm. Five years and another diagnosis later, I’m still processing. That’s the truth of survivorship—the tumor may be gone, but cancer never goes away.
This is what inspired my Scars of Survivorship series. “Swollen” is the first installment, based on a photo I took of my stomach days after my radical nephrectomy on October 26, 2020. I had this surgery to remove a tumor found on my left kidney—what turned out to be stage 1 chromophobe renal cell carcinoma. At the time, my stomach felt swollen and on fire—there, in this perpetual state of fullness, pregnant with remnants of fear and freedom, under incisions that burned.
Creating Scars of Survivorship has been my way of giving shape to those emotions that so many survivors carry. The pain, the loneliness, the anxiety, the hope—all etched into our bodies like the scars from our treatments.
For the series, I use acrylics in a monochromatic palette of Ivory Black, Payne’s Gray, and Titanium White to capture the intimate details of a person’s cancer experience. Each painting focuses on the physical impact while also honoring cancer’s invisible imprints. I then incorporate an accent color representing the ribbon of the cancer featured to remind us of the identity and resilience behind each story.
52 Views of Cancer
52 Views of Cancer is a deck of playing cards illustrated by people who know cancer firsthand. Each of the 52 cards carries original artwork by a different cancer patient, survivor, or immediate family member, each with their own view of the disease.
The artwork comes first. We're bringing the deck to major scientific and medical conferences and putting these artists' work directly into the hands of the researchers and clinicians working on the cancers they've faced.
Learn more about Invenra’s efforts to fight cancer.
