Collapse, 2020

Building on the motifs discovered in the first painting, Is this Really Happening?, this work captures the emotions and body sensations of traumatic loss and the impact of extreme stress on the nervous system. In late 2020 I was starting to feel very tired. One night I felt asleep on the couch which is not like me. I got up to turn off the lights. The next thing I know I'm looking up at the kitchen cupboards. Four days later I was raced to the Sunshine Hospital due to concussion. The impact of the long hours and getting the brunt of others anger towards the Government hour after hour was starting to surface.

I was deeply grieving and exhausted at this point. So much that we had taken for granted was gone during the pandemic with no way of knowing if and when it would return. There was a lot of anger and confusion in our society at the time leading to what is often known as 'ambiguous loss'. Wikapedia describes it as a loss "that occurs without a significant likelihood of reaching emotional closure or a clear understanding". At the time we were searching for answers, scouring news reports and listening to number of people dying in nursing homes and hospitals. We were losing people and had lost our way of life but being in it, we couldn't process it.

This may explain why you are still grieving, three years later. You are not alone. With traumatic grief, particularly due to a disaster, it takes a long time to process. Like in war time, there may be remnants that always remain with us, helping us honour the severity of what we have experienced.