This piece was designed to be open for interpretation; to evoke individual feelings and emotions pertinent to the viewer. The rainbow symbolises diversity, the LGBTQ+ community, the ‘Spoonie’ or chronic illness community, or any spectrum of people, places, or feelings.  The hand is meant to represent the hand of the viewer, giving them some ownership of what they are viewing.  This hand can be thought of as either reaching for or throwing in the heart. The heart itself is symbolic and can be interpreted as either directly the heart or love of the viewer, possibly love the viewer is looking for, or the inner self wanting to be set free or being set free. The birds are also carrying hearts inside them. These can be representative of love in the air, a feeling of being surrounded by love, caring and acceptance, or possibly even the battle to capture love set free.

This piece was truly made with an open perspective and with intent for the viewer to create their own narrative based on their own feelings and lives. My hope is that each individual that views this piece will find something that speaks to them in it.

The weight of the world – something that we may have all felt we have had upon us at some stage in our existence or other. This piece, while personal to my life and situation, is also meant to be representative of many people’s hidden trauma, pain, and burdens that they have either been forced to, or lovingly, carry. The woman’s nudity demonstrates her vulnerability and how she feels splayed open to the world without any privacy, and invasions upon her dignity and boundaries are shown by the protective yet strained and stressed position in which she has positioned herself. Whilst at the same time, she still tries to hide her emotions behind her hair cascading down over her face, as if it were a mask at a masquerade ball. The words on the world demonstrate the burdens or vulnerabilities that she carries. These ones are mine personally and only just a few. But these words are like continents, each with its own distinctly different and diverse group of people, indigenously relating to each emotion, situation and action etc. While I’m hoping to convey my own deep feelings, I also want the viewer to be able to embrace this piece and release their own buried emotions, setting them free. The massive shadow and its dense blackness is representative of just how truly heavy that world is, sitting there on her shoulders. The darkness shows how dark of a place those words could take her but while she holds strong and maintains the balance, the darkness remains only just hovering nearby. This is her choice and inner strength maintaining a healthy state of mind despite what are and have been, extremely challenging situations. The single tear shows that we do all need to release our emotions sometimes. That tear however does not come with a finite emotion, that is interpretive to the viewer – it has a meaning to me but I wish the viewer to interpret it in their own way. That single tear could be sadness, fear depression, anxiety etc. – anything in the perceived negative end of the emotional scale. But it could also be a tear of happiness, joy, pride, happy surprise, love etc. This is why I wish the viewer the interpret this as they will. Lastly, her feet are specifically shown, and shown as being bare. This is a way of demonstrating that her soul is exposed and open – both vulnerable and raw as well as accepting and empathetic.

In front of you is a piece that you may find confronting and it was meant to be – simple yet bold. This piece is the caps locks way of me expressing my own personal journey through domestic violence and how I feel so strongly about it overall. I have placed the white ribbon which is usually associated with White Ribbon Australia, an organisation that promotes awareness of violence perpetrated upon women by men in domestic situations and advocates for its end. While I do support this movement, you will notice the figure leaving the room is ambiguous as to gender. That is purposeful as I believe we need to recognise ALL victims of domestic violence. A lot of men out there are being abused in various ways by their significant others but it will either go unreported due to shame and stigma or it will not be counted as a part of the statistics as organisations such as White Ribbon, however well meaning, focus only on the male on female violence. The reason my artwork has a woman/feminine image is because she is directly representing myself and other women I have personally known whom have survived domestic violence situations. The significance of the door is that often a perpetrator will leave immediately after (in my opinion, because of their own subconscious shame), but also the door is the proverbial one that the victim ‘accidentally’ bumped into causing the black eye…yet again! The woman’s hair shows that she is always still trying to maintain her identity but it has been tussled once again and hairs snapped by whatever type of physical assault occurred here. The bald patch demonstrating a time of someone I love whom had their hair torn out of their scalp during their assault. The chain with what appears to be her name HOPE around her neck, is far more metaphoric than that. The chain demonstrates the constraints that she feels, the sense of powerlessness from the emotional abuse and isolation. The chain is similar to bars or a fence recognisant of those in a prison. The chain is not complete though as it is broken and being held apart by the word HOPE. This is not her name as it would appear, this is what she has and needs. Hope is the only thing keeping her going and will be the only thing that will one day give her the strength to be able to make that run for safety and freedom. Hope is a strong emotion that we all could do with remembering to have, to hold onto and foster in others – not taking it for granted. Although her heart is crushed, her soul on the verge of being destroyed, hope is the glue that binds. This, combined with having to adhere to ‘social norms’, aide her in, each and everyday, no matter the pain or situation, plastering on a smile! The band aid across the mouth with the lipstick smile validates her efforts at hiding the situation, the band aid specifically, as is often perceived as ‘a band aid fix’, or band aids cover up sore spots, wounds or blemishes that we don’t want the light of day to see. The smile simply shows the face that people in these situations will put on and you may never even know that they are going through what they are – outwardly they are too proud, or scared, to let it show.  You might know someone or be that someone yourself. What is behind your smile?

Furpanions – dogs, cats, whichever or whatever your love, animals bring a unique kind of care into your life. In this case, we are referring to a particular gorgeous doggie Indie. A vibrant, full of life pup whom embodies the true unconditional love that dogs are so well known for. Now you would be forgiven for thinking that this beautiful girl is my own furpanion – sadly not. She is the furpanion of a close friend amd I have not even actually met Indie in person, only via video and image. I just knew when I saw her that her vibrancy needed to be captured. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to my dearest furpanion in June 2020 – a guide dog named Beth whose empathy and love opened my eyes to how far unconditional can truly go. She will always be in my heart but there is a hole where a furpanion belongs, one day hopefully to be refilled. For now I enjoy others’ furpanions, such as Indie.

In this piece, I wanted to capture Indie’s soul, as she has this presence about her that comes off her like a gentle sweet fragrance. In her eyes there appears to be an ongoing pool of love, adventure, and a twist of cheekiness. Her smile shows how happy she is with her hooman, the flappy, long tongue, poised to lick your entire face without a moments warning. Her jowls droopily hanging along the side of her ecstatic mouth, pulling her cheeks up into the cutest of dimples. She makes you want to just squeeze her happy cheeks and hug her eternally….or is that just me? Indie has a strong personality that shows through distinctly in her eyes and that is what I have done my best to capture here. Her ears are variably positionable and can look like they are missing one day to parachutes another, as can be seen here. I have captured her on a day that she was doing a half half kind of day. I like the lopsidedness of the ears as it just adds to her true personality. With this piece I tried a new technique than I am used to. I lightly scored the paper using a knitting needle both before and after applying the first layers of fur to help give more dimension to Indie. The final layers were done using varying pressures with a 8B woodless graphite pencil, thus giving the almost rubbing like appearance.

This is not only a (biased opinion), beautiful sunset, nor is it only a sentimental piece, this is actually my first artistic foray into using oil pastels. Late one evening while enjoying some time with my daughter and reflecting on now passed guide dog, Beth or Betty as we called her; I got a sudden urgency to create or as I said to my daughter laughably at the time, “I must art!”. This piece however is not all giggles, but at the same time it is not all tears, even though my first reaction when I finished and looked at was to cry. As I mentioned in my biography, I put my all into my pieces, and this one was very close to my heart. With the pastels, I created a gradient sky from an almost dark purple night sky poking in through to the burning final flames of the days sun as it slips below the horizon. The ocean itself looks like it is on fire from the reflection of the sun drifting away but demonstrating that it’s flame will still burn brightly even when we cannot see it directly – similarly to people and furpanions in our life. Sometimes they may not be visible to us anymore, but the flame of their memory still burns brightly within our hearts and minds. The crashing wave coming into shore symbolising that nothing in life is smooth sailing but if you ride it out you will end up safely on solid land. The horizon line is completely ablaze as that it where all have gone that we have lost and all are coming from that we are yet to meet. For me personally this signifies the loss particularly of three special souls – my great grandmother who ever was taken from me when I was the same age as my daughter is now; my own Mum whom we lost in 2007 when my daughter was only four-months-old, and my soul mate guide dog Beth (Betty is what we called her), whom we lost June 2020. The paw prints in the sand, heading into the horizon are those of Beth as she had to travel that last walk without me.

There is so much beauty in the piece though, as each of the souls, all that I have lost and all lost in general are glistening in the background creating these magical sunsets for us. It feels like it is coming out toward you, that is the new life coming forth. New life doesn’t need to be literal, it can be whatever you need it to mean, interpret as you will.  Most of all what I wanted out of creating this piece was for people to find beauty, solace, peace and joy. If it moved you in anyway at all, then I feel that I have achieved my goals. May you find your inner peace and next time you miss a loved one, or a new life comes into your world, perhaps seek out a sunset/sunrise or think back to this piece.