Falling I

This drawing with ink pens was done with my left non-dominant hand and....

Tasmanian Tiger Tears

'Tasmanian Tiger Tears'  15.5 x 10.5inches   39.5 x 26.5cm  Watercolour  2011

This piece is the right handed drawing and painting that evolved from the left-handed 'Thylacine Tears'. The background represents maps, particularly maps of the rugged mountains and thick forests of Tasmania where hopefully Thylacines still live, hidden from the world. Though sadly they probably were killed out and we mourn them. Hopefully we won't have to mourn the Tasmanian Devil who's numbers are dwindling in the wild due to a terrible cancer.

Thylacine Tears

'Thylacine Tears'  Left-handed drawing and Watercolour   2011

Sedna

'Sedna'  15.5 x 11inches   39.5 x 28cm   Left handed drawing and Watercolour  2011

Like learning to hand embroider with my left hand I have also been trying to teach myself how to draw with my left hand, it seems a lot harder. You can't control it as much as you can with your dominant hand. You just have to let it do and draw what it wants. I believe your left hand is more connected to your creative right half of your brain. It has certainly been interesting seeing the very different things I've been drawing with my left hand as opposed to my right. I drew and painted this image completely with my left hand, this no-armed mermaid just appeared, I was not consciously thinking of her previously. I believe she is Sedna, who is the Inuit Goddess of the sea and marine animals. There are many stories about her, the one I know of is where her fingers are cut off and she sinks to the bottom of the sea while her fingers become sea animals like seals and whales, and she becomes their Goddess.

I'm Blue

'I'm Blue' 10 x 10 inches  25.5 x 25.5cm   Left-handed Hand Embroidery on Painted Cotton   2011


Shannon, Cathryn and I decided that our theme and title for Fringe 2011 would be Trilogy: 3 Artists, 3 Stories. My focus (and it could be said my art therapy) was 'Trilogy of Trauma', thus working through my grief with the loss of my Grandmother, then my Father and then the shock and pain of my accident and facing the potential loss of the use of my right hand and arm in life and art. Part of my artist's statement read as this:...2010 for me has been about loss, enormous grief and pain, of endings, of fracture, falling, fear, fragmenting, of breaking, and nightmares. Out of all this I've been making my art, even if it's been with my left hand. I need to make art to survive, to keep going, to keep living. The images that have been appearing in my art are: falling, fragmented girls, mermaids with no arms, many tears, and animals or humans trying to rescue or protect, or cocoon, and feel safe. The express the need when grieving or wounded to curl up, to cocoon one's self, to hide, to shut down. The Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger has also been appearing in my work. I lived in Tassie for 8 years and I realised the Thylacine is a good symbol to represent someone we have lost, who has become extinct, and who we grieve for.

It was very difficult to create this very personal, carthartic work but it has been helping me through the darkness to find my way to the light again.

I felt like I was going mad not being able to draw or stitch so I ordered an emboidery frame on the internet (you rest your embroidery frame on it and it can sit on your lap or a table and it doesn't have to be held) and taught myself to hand embroider with my left hand. The hand embroidery 'I'm Blue' above is completely stitched by my left, non-dominant hand. It now feels totally normal to stitch that way and you can't tell the difference between a piece that I've embroidered with my right or left hand. Above are also two detail photos of it - one was taken while it was in progress and the other is taken from the back.

Adelaide Fringe 2011

My very good friends at Ethos Gallery - Shannon, Claire and Cathryn, have been amazing in their support of me during this last year. They wanted me to go ahead with our proposed Fringe exhibition in March 2011. It became something for me to focus on and also a huge challenge in that I had to find other ways to make art with only very limited use of my right hand and arm.

I'm back

Finally I'm back posting, it is a relief, it has been a long time between posts. I thought I'd start with a pretty pic (ie an autumn leaf I took a picture of in a park near my house in Mt Barker - I do love those Autumn reds) and then go to the not so pretty ones. Not long after I last did a round of postings on my blog in October 2010, I slipped on a few drops of water on tiles in my house and fell badly. I'm double jointed and I fell on my right palm with my elbow locked, I heard a crunch then found myself in enourmous pain. I had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance where after extremely painful xrays it was found that I had a very badly broken elbow and I had also ripped all the ligaments and everything. I had surgery the next day where there put in a lot of screws, a plate and wire to put my elbow back together. The above xrays are from a few weeks later. You can see the huge droopy half cast in the xray and all the staples along the incision. I am a right handed artist with now a very severe injury to my right elbow. What followed were months of recovery and physio and pain. I am now 7 months down the track and still in quite a lot of pain and discomfort and most likely will be for some time to come according to the doctor and physio. My accident happened on the 4 month anniversary of my Dad's death. To save my sanity I had to find new ways to make art.