Life After Five Exhibition Winners

Ann Clemens

COLOURS OF LIFE

My journey, through fear and hope to happiness, expressed through colour using mixed media.

I chose the sunflower for its glorious golden colour and size, and because it lends itself to the story of my journey. I see it as a symbolic reference to the feminine beauty of the breast. At the centre of the flower black represents the damaged cells. Moving out, we see the gradual eradication of the damaged cells during treatment. Then we reach the golden yellow petals – the return to health.

In the background, the hexagons represent simple, single cell structures. The cells change colour as they radiate outwards; the colours, in order, symbolise the journey:

RED/ ORANGE – surgery, blood and radiotherapy
PURPLE/ DARK BLUE/ LIGHT BLUE – depression and bruising
BLUE GREEN/ LIGHT GREEN – regeneration
GOLD CELL HIGHLIGHT – healing light filtering through all cells
BRIGHT YELLOW – healing sunshine
GOLD/LIGHT BLUE – golden days and blue skies

Helen Sherriff

TOP KNOT PIGEON

I had breast cancer in 1999, but I am still here nearly 10 years later. I didn’t always feel so good. At one stage, I was wearing a beanie over my nearly bald head. I pulled it off, looking in the mirror, and there was a long strand of hair left on top, like the dead top knot pigeon I’d found that morning. So I really identified with it, imagining myself dead pretty soon. Later I saw two live pigeons in the yard, although they never visit us. If that was a sign, there should only be one, I thought. Around that time my mother died. I was picking a few more flowers for her funeral when a top knot pigeon fluttered down right in front of me. That was a sign! I remembered the Bible verse about the sparrow who doesn’t die unnoticed. In this painting the blue represents the eyes of God, who is watching over me.

Zixuan Zhang

Ruhua is my mother’s friend, and she is a Chinese professional actress. About ten years ago, she was diagnosed as having breast cancer. All of a sudden, her whole world collapsed. Facing the cruel possibility of loosing every thing: health, career, beauty, family, even life, she was so desperate that she tried to kill herself several times. Fortunately, with the strong support of her family, she stood up again and accepted treatment with a positive attitude. After resecting her right breast, she was fully recovered. However, defect of body was a destructive strike to an actress like her. She was a brave woman after all. Now ten years have passed, she is still as active on stage as ever before, continuing to spread beauty and joy to her audiences. She has won the game, finally.

Anne Sheehan

I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and underwent surgery. While in remission I had a relapse when I was on a family holiday, which had to be cut short. Over the past eight years I have undergone treatment and currently have a relatively stable cell count.

The artwork which I am presenting for this competition is a representation of the female body, my female body and aims to show the state of confusion I was in when initially undergoing treatment whilst struggling to understand how the disease works and is/will affect not only my body, but my whole life.

While the perplexity in this piece represents my past dealing with breast cancer, the picture as a whole represents my life as segmented, and simple, as I have come to know what life is worth to me.

I am still undergoing chemo therapy sessions regularly and having transfusions, but I have found solace in the simple things in my life including my family, companionship and spirituality.

Gai Grayson

NEXT SEASON

My journey with breast cancer began in the year 2000. Whilst the rest of Sydney was cheering the Olympics, I was battling the biggest hurdle of my life. The cancer had spread to my lymph glands, so my oncologist recommended two rounds of chemotherapy, each lasting three months, punctuated by six weeks of radiotherapy.

But the most important therapy I undertook at that time was to learn to paint. I joined a watercolour class at the regional art gallery and met a group of women who had become my friends and colleagues. My work with them has helped me regain confidence and health and turned my life along a path I never would have travelled if I had not contracted breast cancer.

Splashing paint and water on paper creates an abstract background to my work and from this chaos I reassert the beauty of detail – much like my own life’s experience.