I have been co-creating art in collaboration with people living with illness in communities across Canada. I have been working with recent transplant patients, head and neck cancer patients, suicide survivors in the Arctic, and psychiatric patients at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Embedded in artworks, you will see the works we co-created as I spent time with these individuals and in their communities. You will also see my own illness experiences and how they weave and knot with the work, as well as insights created with patients. Illness is a vital meaning-making event in people's lives, and the stories we use to narrate our illness to others and ourselves matter deeply. I aim to tell stories about the experience of illness with the hope that this might increase our confidence and vocabulary to discuss, experience, and express these meaningful events.

Brad Necyk is a Canadian visual artist and writer with a PhD in Psychiatry whose practice focuses on mental illness, empathy, consciousness, climate change, and flourishing. His doctoral research was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal, and he is a Research Associate with the Earth Futures Institute and Film & Digital Media at the University of California Santa Cruz.

His artworks and films have been shown across Canada and internationally, and he has completed his first book: ALL SKY, MIRROR OCEAN: A Healing Manifesto, on mental illness, visionary art, and healing.