In 2004 Ian Breakwell was awarded an AHRC-funded Fellowship at Central St Martins College of Art & Design to explore new ways of presenting his Diary, entitled The Diary Re-invented. Later in 2004 he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. The next fourteen months saw a frenetic pace of work, collating forty years of Diary material for future publication and a new audio-visual installation BC/AD [Before Cancer/After Diagnosis], based on his Final Diary. Breakwell died in October 2005; he left instructions for his colleagues to complete his work.

The Diagnosis Drawings, thirteen in all, were executed in late summer 2004, during the two weeks after his final diagnosis:

Shock, and feverish consideration of the implications meant that I could not sleep, and I made a drawing each

night, sometimes in the hours of darkness, sometimes at dawn, in a physical state of fatigued insomnia and slight hallucination. The flower-like drawings are images of organic growth and blooming. On the fourteenth night my normal sleep pattern returned and the series ended.

The Drawings have been chosen as the key work for the 2000 decade. They were exhibited at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery in April 2006, accompanied by extracts from his Final Diary and his last artwork, a life-size photo-collage self-portrait entitled Parasite and Host.

Felicity Sparrow
2007