Prevention and Recovery Care (PARC)

– I think art, no matter what genre, whether it’s theater, whether it’s poetry, whether it’s writing, whether it’s dance, is our creative juice, is our, you know, is connected with our spirit, is connected with our soul. I’m a member of the stolen generation. I was taken from my mother when I was 10 days old. My mother passed away three months before I found her. And it’s still a trauma that will live with me, be with me to the last day. But going home was where I met my extended family and a lot of my mother’s cousins, my aunties are artists. They would share their artwork with me which helped me to understand where I belonged and where I fitted in within the culture. I started painting in 1991, which was a way to share with my family where I’d been for 29 years. to share with my family where I’d been for 29 years. I can’t speak my language and art has become now my voice. Art was never really something that I saw as a career. It was rather an avenue for me to be able to look at my issues and get them out of my head and onto a canvas. So it became a tangible way for me to deal with a lot of the situations, the trauma that I’ve been through. I’ve done a lot of commission work for various organizations to do with various social justice issues around health. I do a lot of art healing workshops with other groups. I’ve done them with stolen generations, people with children in remand centers, where they’ve been in and out of foster homes over the years to help them to find their place and find their balance. And it’s not about making a pretty picture to show all the happy things, it’s about dealing with the hard issues. I was commissioned by Wellways to produce a painting to interpret the services that they were wanting to offer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. So, it starts with the campfire. Then this represents the gray coming in to represent depression and issues around mental health. to represent depression and issues around mental health. With the artwork that I do, it’s based on Western desert art from central Australia. So the imagery of the campfire, the concentric circles in the center is serious. It’s Tjukurrparis, our law. And it can be used to interpret so many different things. And this one, it’s the campfire. Pathways out show the journeys that people go until they’re in their own place. And I’ve used colors of grays to show where no matter where we are, to show where no matter where we are, there are triggers that come up in our lives that might take us a steps back. And sometimes you might take us a few steps back but you can always go forward. The triangles represent the mind, the conflict and going from ping pinging inside. And so, with the support of the colors that are coming in for the services, they’ve now getting a clear pathway on how to go. And then as they go through their journey, until they’re in a place where they’re.

– In a good place.

– In a good place. The artwork I hope will provide another avenue for people to look at how they might be able to express themselves in where they’re at in their journey. Because art is a voice of the people. It’s an opportunity to be able to get what’s inside of you out.