WHEN TRAGEDY MEETS CREATIVIT Y:
A STORY OF HEALING For anyone inspired by the ability of art, poetry and the strength of the human spirit to flourish despite the toughest times, the first exhibition by creative dynamo, Siobhan Rosenthal, currently showing at Uxbridge Arts & Culture, is essential viewing. Jes Magill reports.
The autobiographical collection of poems and landscapes titled, Yeah Nah: From Howick to Maraetai which follow Siobhan Rosenthal’s artistic journey through healing and recovery couldn’t be more singular or poignant.
the ability to compose music in her head and that ‘drawing’ on her iPad was still possible.
Taking a year to complete the works, this exhibition is an important step in Siobhan’s recovery from domestic abuse.
Living in South Auckland while she’s recuperating, Siobhan took to driving east to explore and create on the days she felt strong enough and Yeah, Nah is the wellspring from that time.
“Gifts sometimes arrive in unexpected ways,” she wrote recently. “Flowers blossom in the most unlikely and barren places and so it was with me and art. I discovered in the wreckage of my former life and health, the new ability to draw and a much deeper desire to write.”
“I would never have found that out if I hadn’t been forced to lie still,” she says.
Images are worked in watercolour and coloured pen; poems speak of her connection to the land bordered by sea and the healing that mercifully occurred there.
Suffering a brain injury as a result of domestic violence in August 2018; the lingering effects for Siobhan are exhaustion, temporary paralysis and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and, as a result of her disability, she is unable to care for her three boys, now aged 15, 13 and 10.
Textures and narrative inspired by local Maori and Jewish cultural contexts also interweave through the collection. When one son attended Kohanga reo her awareness of Maori Tikanga flourished, and being part Jewish, she also felt driven to discover the experiences of her immigrant forebears in New Zealand.
Initially frustrated when her injury prevented her from painting or drawing, her creativity sent her a couple of lifelines: she discovered
This strong sense of ‘other’ is further layered with Siobhan’s reality today as well as her own background.
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Born in England to a South African mother and an Irish father, as a child she lived in each of these three countries. Then, in 2011 she arrived in New Zealand with her two sons and Kiwi husband, whom she met in the United Kingdom. Yeah Nah isn’t all gloom – it offers joy as well. Maraetai, or meeting place, is the eastern most suburb of greater Auckland and Siobhan knew intuitively that this place, and the coastline to Howick, to Paparoa, was where she needed to be. “I discovered I didn’t have to come far to find this beautiful landscape,” she says. Siobhan’s exhibition comprises 20 artworks and 20 poems. Birth – Hunua speaks to nature’s primal, curative force. Cornfield with its colour and lightness, emanates delight but the dark figure in one corner and an empty chair in the other signify pain and damage. The symbolism of an empty chair used in art however, can mean either hope or loss and in this case, seems to signify both. Purim – inspired by a holiday celebrating a biblical story of Jewish survival against powerful odds – is Siobhan’s nod to resilience.
Although her work appears whimsical at times there’s depth beneath the surface and you can almost feel the healing. “Different textures are important to me. I don’t want to produce water colours that you can almost see through. I want people to be aware that they’re paintings and if I’m using pen, I want people to see the strokes. “Some of the poems are miserable, some are happy. Some talk of divorce, others of child rearing and illness. But I try and find the beauty beyond the despair. Like the difference between a poet such as Sylvia Plath, who simply pictures the place of despair and asks you to inhabit it with her; and someone like Seamus Heaney who takes you to very dark places but will always provide a kind of verbal beauty and affirmation of life through nature. There’s always light in his poems so that’s what I try to do.” Siobhan’s journey from a talented writer to a creative dynamo – think in-demand artist, playwright and author – is nothing short of miraculous. In and out of hospital for several months following the abuse www.eastlife.co.nz
