INTERVIEW

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.

Taking a year to complete the works, this exhibition is an important step in Siobhan’s recovery from domestic abuse.

“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.”

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.

Initially frustrated when her injury prevented her from painting or drawing, her creativity sent her a couple of lifelines: she discovered the ability to compose music in her head and that ‘drawing’ on her iPad was still possible.

“I would never have found that out if I hadn’t been forced to lie still,” she says.

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.

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.

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.

This strong sense of ‘other’ is further layered with Siobhan’s reality today as well as her own background. 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.

incident, her heightened creativity surfaced first and urged her on. With a PhD in Post War Theatre Studies from Sheffield University, she’s no stranger to intellectual application and instinctively gave her new talents the space and focus they needed to grow.

“After leaving hospital I started a creative writing course with MIT and then became interested in art too, so I started a course with The Learning Connexion.

“Then my writing tutor advised me not to focus on art; that I was a good writer but my tutor at TLC said painting was my thing. It felt as though they were looking at me with different spectacles and each could focus on a different part of me.”

This ‘bidding war’ of sorts was a little overwhelming but not unpleasant and when Siobhan found an article on Inter arts, things started falling in place.

“I was already intrigued with the connection between mediums so it was exciting to discover that Inter arts is what I am.

“At the moment I’m also doing an online digital media course through Youbee, the big animation, film-making, digital whiz kid thing. I’m like a fish out of water but I’m absolutely loving it!”

Considering Siobhan’s disability, her output is astounding. She’s already had works exhibited in Wellington and Foxton; and she’s been published in several art journals including Esthetica and The Same.

She was runner up for the 2020 Adams NZ Playwriting award and her poetry, fiction and memoir have been published in literary journals including New Zealand Poetry and World Literature Today.

Currently working on a play about art for Playmarket, Siobhan is also producing a script for the Basement Theatre on her experience of homelessness which occurred following her brain injury.

She’s collaborating, too, with composers and other writers for a series of workshops NZ Opera is hosting and her book of poetry and art, A Chill Wind Dawning will be available at Uxbridge.

A script she wrote about lockdown, Hardwicke 1849, is being performed in Wellington this month at the Tahi Solo Theatre Festival, and she’s revising a novel called Road to War which the Hamilton Arts Festival wants to develop as script with Siobhan for the 2022 festival.

Asked why her work resonates so well with people, Siobhan wasn’t sure so she asked a friend, who replied, “you’ve been through a lot and understand vulnerability so you represent the world through that viewpoint in a way people can understand. It strikes a chord.”

Creativity for Siobhan the day EastLife visited involved working with 3D graph paper and playing with algebra. The latter surprises her and amuses her sons because, prior to August 2018, their mother had no interest or talent for numbers.

Thankfully, Siobhan’s sense of home for now is fluid. “I think my childhood taught me that wherever you are, there are stories, cultures and interesting people; that if you keep quiet and look carefully, you will learn a lot.

“People ask me what it’s like, not being able to care for my boys but I do care for them, albeit differently. When you don’t live with your children you connect with them on a different level; more as people and less as annoying little things who won’t go to bed or do the dishes.

“The boys and I talk a lot. We have fascinating conversations, we roar with laughter and we experiment with artistic materials such as Lego!

“I look on my role now as encouraging them to experience their gentler, more artistic side and I feel I owe it to them to show that, yes, bad things happen but good things can come out of that.

“Whilst the way this all happened was horrible, it feels a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn and study whatever my creativity guides me to do. I’m also left very interested in how the human brain works and recovers.”

As to picturing her future, Siobhan sees a stronger woman continuing to explore her creativity, discovering more of New Zealand’s “glorious landscape” and spending less time recuperating – “I’m getting there.”

Siobhan’s recovery embodies resilience and surprisingly, an acceptance of being in the right place, albeit not one she would ever have envisaged. “New Zealand still feels like a place where I can flourish. There’s an openness and an optimism in this society which I love.”