Sam Taylor-Wood suffers rope burns for her art

The pose looks effortless, graceful and ethereal, just as artist Sam Taylor-Wood intended.

But the 42-year-old today revealed for the first time how this "perfect shot" left her in extreme pain.

Taylor-Wood, who has fought breast and colon cancer, said the Escape Artist and Suspended series left her arms, chest, legs and torso covered with rope burns.

Many of the ropes, which were used to harness her body before being digitally removed from the pictures, cut across the scars of her cancer surgery.

"I have to hide my face in the pictures. It is a combination of hiding the grimacing pain - because I think that destroys the photograph - but it is also because I don't think you need to see my face." She said the pain was necessary as the photographs were a response to her fight against cancer. In 1997 she was diagnosed with colon cancer just weeks after giving birth to her first child Angelica. Three years later she underwent a mastectomy when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. "I made them shortly after I was no longer referring to myself as an ill person," she said. "There is a definite sense of physical freedom from the constraints of illness. My biggest fears aren't with my work. My biggest fears are walking through hospital doors. Once you can face that, being fearless about your work is easy." Her comments were made for an episode of the South Bank Show due to be shown on Sunday on ITV at 10.50pm.

The documentary maker Matt Cain followed her for a year, watching her work and speaking to her friends, including the singer Elton John. Elton said: "I always said if I ... was to go the other way again, Sam would be the woman I would want to spend the rest of my life with."

The Escape Artist photographs appear alongside other pieces of Taylor-Wood's work in exhibition Yes I No at White Cube, Mason's Yard, St James's, which runs until 29 November.