My story as told at my exhibtion
Tragedy or trauma breaks through the surface living. It forces us to pause and reassess life as we know it. After my experience of being burnt alive and beaten, I found that life as I had always known it, ceased to be. Life overnight became very different!
For starters it was extremely painful, pain that I didn't know the human body was capable of tolerating. I was confined to bed and I was physically dependent on others for everything. Physical recovery such as burn wound cleaning, learning to use my hand
and arm and to walk after weeks in bed, with the unending need to sleep, were all that occupied me.
At some level I knew emotional processing and psychological adjustments were all critically important, but I had no courage or idea where to start.
The issues of safety, of security and wound care were my first and foremost terrors. Flashbacks – horror, shock, fear, betrayal, fear of the pain inflicted during wound cleaning - the extreme pain and the need to use drugs to cope with the pain, added to
my turmoil. Each daily debridement and unanticipated flashback could incapacitate me and I found I did not have the words to describe what I was feeling or experiencing.
It was a very dark place - I can only describe it as enormous displacement – I was spinning in a vortex.
Trying to talk about it forced a layer of rationality over something that wasn’t rational and so for about two months, my brain completely shut down – reason flew out the window, pain and shock ruled everything.
The only thing that counted in those days was love and caring – Linda’s twice daily visits, my mom's constant help, my friends messages, reassurances, visits, even the nurses commitment to clean me cut through the darkness – they became my lifebuoy – something
I could cling to in the most basic way, while I spun out of control. It was the only thing that felt REAL in a world where real had gone mad…
Real friendship - underpinning real tragedy…
Coming home was heaven – a place where I belonged, even if I couldn’t really function yet was important. It was scary to come home to the same room – sleep and live in the crime scene, but it was also important - it forced me to confront my fear at my
most vulnerable and do the things that helped to overcome it. (The vanishing point - I put in extra security, fire extinguishers and started visualization exercises).
The pictures helped and at an unconscious level pulled at me – I was house bound, incapacitated and needing to keep occupied. Reading - rational hobbies were not possible, concentration wasn’t possible. And so on a whim the one day I considered art – I’d
always loved it, Nicholas had sullied it for me, but the question in my mind was - where did he get his talent from – did I have some unknown creative part of me that I could access?
So I took a sketching book and tried to draw a copy of a simple line sketch that appealed to me.
It took me a couple of hours, but it worked. Then I cautiously tried painting - childrens finger paints at R20 for 4 – I made a royal mess and it looked like a 6 year old’s attempt, but somehow its brightness lifted me.
And so I began to paint – we bought watercolours and a paper pad to start – I knew nothing about the different types of painting, so it made no difference to me. I bought a book with step by step pictures to follow and so the journey began … lighthouses
mostly … nature scenes – sunrises and sunsets.
Hours and hours of painting - silent in the room, locked away from the sun – just me and my pain and my thoughts. Twice a week I saw a psychologist and for the rest, my friends and family came to see me – flowers by the horde – meals for the first 6 weeks
and then just me and my paintbrushes…
It dawned on me at this time that the art was helping – I joined a pottery class – I didn't do particularly well, but I so enjoyed beating up the clay and squishing it over and over. It helped my hand’s flexibility, but it also helped me show my frustrations
safely. Pinch pots – even the name works lol.
A major turning point for me was when my psychologist gave a me a particular exercise to do - she asked me to stand before God as Nicholas’s lawyer and argue for his defense. It was incredibly difficult to do and an emotional minefield. I was to write
it down and send it to her when I felt I had succeeded. It took me days of emotional turmoil – insights and realisations.
The night that I sent it – I painted for hours - I took what was a peaceful lighthouse in a sunset and turned it into the angriest red and black extreme – I slathered paint on - it was a scary picture – oranges, yellows, reds, black – all screaming out the
pic – but when it was done - I was done. I had somehow gotten it right inside myself to accept what he had done, what I felt I had failed to do – I had argued his case in the highest court and most of all I had let go of my anger and fear and I had forgiven
myself…
Later on I felt embarrassed by the picture - it was so raw and I changed it – I toned it down and made it more acceptable ….
But it was a turning point - I then started to consider art as an outlet, my head started operating again - I was dabbling in oils now and loved it, and Val, a fantastic teacher stepped right into my world and offer to teach me (she understood major burns
and burn recovery - she had also lost a child – it was an absolute gift to me) – and we accessed a beautiful, healing centre deep inside me underneath all the scars that was light, life, love and wanted expression. It was strong, filled with colour and it
wanted out – it wanted to stamp its life over the tragedy. Johan and I have also been friends a long time now and I found his photographs reflected these emotions - beauty is in the eye of the beholder and his friendship as a creative and loyal friend helped
me heal. I so enjoy our pieces (the best of black and white extremes, complemented by joyous colour. He is really phenomenal.
My pictures are all peaceful, they’re strong, they’re beautiful – they’re there to help me find my way back - they’re my heart. They do not deny what I have gone through – they’re helping to transform it.
Kintsugi philosophy arrested me when the combination of ceramic and paint came to my attention.
Japenese philosophy - the history of the broken vessel is celebrated and transformed until it is functionally beautiful. I did pieces to reflect that ... but African pieces, closer to home, are the pieces that were symbolic to me of the here and now.
So Val’s Max is here - remembered in all his phenomenal capacity to overcome his burns – his missing legs. Val is celebrated in her ability to teach, rebuild and care; Jeandre is here in her journey to create fluidity, connection post trauma and Johan
in his unfailing friendship and unique ability to understand and express beauty, even in the midst of tragedy.
This Treasuring the Scars exhibition is here to inspire – we all have stories, we all have challenges and we have attempted tonight to show that regardless of how scary our reality is, we do not stand alone. We have friends, we have support, we have tools.
Art in any form is a powerfully functional tool in helping us to unlock our inner realities and allow us a creative expression, that is both wonderous and unique. It's a shared platform where our love, our caring and our sense of community can be built on
– it is an individual and a collective tool to rebuild our lives and the future.
We can celebrate our cracks, our breaks and our history and make them our strengths in the future.
With each art exhibition, we can create more stories just like this - real, moving and courageous and we can build our country one person at a time.
What can you do?
1 Help us spread the word about our campaign on your facebook page, in your church and in your community.
2 Donate - every $15 gets an adult or a teenager a ticket to attend an exhibition.
- every $80 dollars pays a qualified artist to share their story and lessons with the community.
- every $1400 is a fully booked exhibition in a new town.
3 Connect with artists who would like to particpate and people who will benefit from attending.
For more information, visit my website: http://www.antheavanderpluym.com/artist
