The artist Michele Angelo Petrone, who has died aged 43 following admission to hospital with a chest infection, transformed the lives of countless cancer patients and their carers by showing how painting could be used to express their fears about illness and death. He had suffered from Hodgkin's disease for many years, and established a foundation that will carry his work forward.
Michele was born in Kingston-upon-Thames to Italian parents. He studied at Wimbledon College of Art (now University of the Arts, London), Sir John Cass department of art (London Metropolitan University) and at Chelsea College of Art and Design (University of the Arts). He was on the executive committee of the National Artists Association from 1991 to 1994 and worked as a designer with Thames Television, as an exhibitions assistant with the Hayward Gallery and the Southbank Centre, and on projects with Westminster council arts department.
This promising career was to take an extraordinary turn when, aged only 30, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Michele said that nothing had prepared him for the pain, difficulty and fear that followed this diagnosis or for the many years of treatment after periods of remission and relapse, which included high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplantations.
Isolated in his hospital room, he used his skills to express the complex feelings engulfing him; the watercolours and gouaches, painted initially to decorate the door of his room, were the start of depicting the emotional events of his journey through illness and recovery. These were shown in 1996 at the Wigmore Hall in London, under the title Between Night and Day, Michele's metaphor for his journey.
In October of that year he gave an extraordinary presentation of his paintings with an accompanying commentary at the 10th anniversary conference of the cancer information charity Cancerbackup, in Brighton. As a result he was invited to exhibit his paintings at several Sussex venues in 1997, under the title The Emotional Cancer Journey, which was published as a book in 2002. Since then the work has been used by health organisations and medical institutions across the UK and abroad.
In 1998 he took up his first residency at St Peter and St James' hospice, Wivelsfield Green, East Sussex, aiding patients and carers to "colour their feelings" through paint. Works in the exhibition, Touching the Rainbow, were collected in a book in 1999. Moving Pictures, in 2000, extended the work to health professionals, giving them the chance to paint their feelings about caring for patients with life-threatening illness.
As recognition of his work grew, Michele became artist in residence at several schools and cancer centres, and held tutoring posts in university and teaching hospitals, including the Royal Free and University College of London medical school and the University of Northumbria. He also taught on the King's Fund/Lancaster University senior health management programme.
Michele's approach was valued because he had experienced at first hand the way in which cancer affects everyone - patient, family and friends and healthcare professionals. As we have become more hi-tech in our treatments we have sometimes forgotten how to be high-touch with our care as well. Merely facing the knowledge of having a life-threatening disease, let alone dealing with the physical effects and assaults of treatment, stretches most people to their limits.
Aware of this, in 2002, he founded the Michele Angelo Petrone Foundation, (known as the MAP Foundation) a registered charity promoting expression, communication and understanding of the complex issues of serious illness and dying. Under MAP's auspices he gave workshops and presentations nationally and internationally.
Michele was an award-winning artist in his own right, and his paintings are held in the BP Young Europeans collection in Brussels and in public and private collections and in hospitals around the world. In 2004 he won the Brent Sadler Award from the Washington-based Society for the Arts in Healthcare.
The trademark vibrant hues and broad brush strokes of Michele's art also characterised his colourful personal life and relationships, and his love of food (he was an excellent cook), music, love and fun.
Because he touched the lives of so many, his colleagues are determined, through MAP, to keep his work going, mindful of his words in The Emotional Cancer Journey, "I need to know that this body is my body. And I need to know everything that is happening to my body. But most of all I need to know that you know that within my body there is me."
Michele is survived by his parents Maria and Luigi and his sister Cristina.
· Michele Angelo Petrone, artist, born May 21 1963; died May 16 2007