Uncontainable
FIRST PUBLISHED 15th MAY 2026
A blog post about Uncontainable, a mixed media original artwork by With Shaking Hands
I got to a point where I couldn’t deal with it anymore. The statistics. The headlines. The names. The silence that follows every single one of them. So I stopped trying to hold it all in, and painted it out instead. It became Uncontainable.
2 women are killed by a partner or ex-partner in England and Wales every single week. Less than 2% of rapes reported to the police result in a charge or summons. Read those numbers again. And just take a pause for thought. Because they are not really statistics. They are women, real people. A real story the world tried very hard not to have to look at. And one of them is probably someone you know.
Where it came from
With Shaking Hands started with poetry. Words on a page at midnight because the alternative was screaming. But poetry stopped being enough. Some things are too big for a page. Some things need to take up more space.
The image that kept coming back to me was a mouth. Open. Side-on. Not screaming. Not crying. Speaking. Finally, after everything, speaking. Loudly and without a single apology. This vision poured out of my mind, starting as a simple sketch at 11pm on a weeknight:
This is where it started. A quick “back of fag pack” type sketch with a biro! Everything came from this.
It turned into weeks of work, dozens of decisions, more failed experiments than I can count, and more raw material than most people will ever know is buried in a single painting. This is what it became:
Uncontainable. Mixed media on canvas, approx 48×38cm. Acrylic, Posca marker, vellum collage. Housed in an antique gilt frame, sourced 1818 Auctioneers, Milnthorpe. 2026.
What it means
Let me be clear about something. This is not a pretty painting to put on a wall and feel good about. It is going to ask something of you every time you walk past it. If that makes you uncomfortable, good. It should.
Women earn less than men in nearly every single occupation. 71% of advertising still puts women in a housewife role. Recorded rape offences in England and Wales have increased by over 300% in the last decade. These are not opinions. These are facts. Verified, sourced, happening right now in 2026.
The rage that made this piece is real. It was real when I started it and it is more real now than it was then. Because things are not getting better. They are getting worse. And I am done being quiet about it.
In December 2024, Gisele Pelicot stood outside a courtroom in Avignon and said: la honte doit changer de camp. Shame must change sides. She had been drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men over nearly a decade. She waived her anonymity. She stood in open court and she said: the shame is not mine. Her words are on this canvas because they belong there. Because what she did belongs in the permanent record. Because refusing to look away is the very least we can do.
This piece was made in the Lake District, in a small studio, by one woman who got tired of holding it all in. It took weeks. It will take you about thirty seconds to know whether it speaks to you. If it does, you already know exactly why.
The hidden message
Somewhere on this canvas, written in UV reactive ink that is completely invisible in normal light, are five words. “Silence was never consent.” You need a blacklight to find it. Some truths are buried so deep you have to go looking. But they’re there. They’ve always been there.
What is actually in it
Mixed media on canvas. Acrylic paint, palette knife work in Liquitex Iridescent Rich Silver, Posca markers, vellum collage fragments, neon paint, and that UV hidden message.
The background is silver, heavily textured, with mark making from household objects pressed directly into the paint. It catches the light differently depending on where you stand. That is intentional. The context you bring to this piece changes what you see in it.
The mouth sits on the left, facing right, partially cropped at the edge of the canvas. No face. No body. No identity. Because this is not about one woman. It is about all of us.
From the mouth, four neon streams explode outward across the canvas in fluorescent pink, orange, green and yellow. And riding those streams are words. Dozens of them, carefully cut from vellum and printed from real, verified sources. Statistics from the ONS. Headlines from national newspapers. Quotes from Gisele Pelicot, Maya Angelou, Malala Yousafzai, Emmeline Pankhurst, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Tiny near the mouth, barely readable. Growing louder, bolder, more confrontational the further they travel from it.
One of the largest text reads: “the world has no choice but to hear us.” And we will make sure that happens.
It lives in an ornate gilt frame sourced from 1818 Auctioneers. That frame used to hold an After Fragonard print. A woman, reading quietly in candlelight. Decorative. Passive. Contained. That canvas is gone. What is in this frame now will not be contained. That contrast is the entire point.
Uncontainable
Original mixed media on canvas. Acrylic, palette knife silver, Posca marker, vellum collage, UV hidden message. Housed in antique gilt frame. One of a kind.
Prints available soon. Original available POA. Details at withshakinghands.co.uk
Sources and references
Every statistic and quote used in Uncontainable is sourced and verified. In a world drowning in misinformation, that matters. Here are the sources for every piece of text on this canvas.
“La honte doit changer de camp.” (Shame must change sides.)
Gisele Pelicot, outside Avignon courthouse, September 2024. Widely reported including Associated Press, BBC News and CBS News, December 2024.
Violence against women and girls is a “national emergency.”
National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing, National Policing Statement on VAWG, July 2024.
VAWG makes up nearly 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales.
National Police Chiefs’ Council, National Policing Statement on VAWG, July 2024.
Recorded rape offences in England and Wales have increased by over 300% in the last decade.
National Audit Office, citing Office for National Statistics Crime in England and Wales data. Reported by UK Parliament Commons Library, 2025.
1 in 3 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime.
Office for National Statistics, Domestic Abuse Prevalence and Victim Characteristics, 2024.
2 women are killed by a partner or ex-partner in England and Wales every week.
Femicide Census, UK.
Less than 2% of rapes reported to the police result in a charge or summons.
End Violence Against Women Coalition, UK, 2023.
68% of women have been harassed while running outdoors.
University of Manchester / N8 Police Research Partnership study, Dr Caroline Miles and Professor Rose Broad, 2024. Reported by Women’s Running magazine.
Women earn less than men in nearly every single occupation.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Also supported by ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025.
71% of advertising still shows women in a housewife role.
Enders Analysis, 2020.
A woman is 50% more likely than a man to receive a wrong diagnosis after a heart attack.
British Heart Foundation, 2019.
“We are in a sorority that none of us asked to join.”
Liz Stein, Jeffrey Epstein survivor, speaking outside the US Capitol, September 2025.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Supreme Court Justice.
“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?”
Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala, 2013.
“Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women.”
Maya Angelou.
“Our collective voice is powerful.”
Liz Stein, Jeffrey Epstein survivor, speaking outside the US Capitol, September 2025.
“We must raise our voices until the world has no choice but to hear us.”
With Shaking Hands, 2026.
“The promise of equality is not the same as true equality.”
Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In, 2013.
“I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”
Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette leader, speech, 1913.
“We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.”
Emmeline Pankhurst, Women’s Social and Political Union, 1908.
1 in 2 adult survivors of rape have experienced it more than once.
Rape Crisis England and Wales, 2025.
39% of rape survivors didn’t tell police because they didn’t think the police could help.
Rape Crisis England and Wales, 2025.
“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”
Michelle Obama.
