She Exhibition Art Piece 1 – She Was So Little

This is the first artwork in my SHE Exhibition Series, which is an exhibition based around mental health themes. As a narrative series of works, each piece tells a part of a whole story.

This first piece is all about that feeling of being so alone and tiny and unseen. It’s about that feeling of being helpless and powerless and lost. I felt like that a lot. Like I was cocooned in my own small, dark space with thoughts that I was afraid of and overwhelmed by and that I could never escape from.

I chose to work this piece as an acetate etching because I really like that dream like quality it lends to the finished print and because part of the joy of printmaking is that each piece is unique. The colour is hand done with fountain pen ink, which has a tendency to fade over time, which is another quality I really like. To know that in 10 years time the colour in her will have faded significantly, even though these prints are sprayed with Krylon UV resistant coating in order to slow down the fading process, gives me a bit of a thrill. In some ways that fading is like the way we as people tend to change and fade and grow and we never remain that same but the core of us is always there. There will always be an imprint of us even when the moments fade.

So this is where SHE began. She was small and unkempt. She was a feral child and did not want to look at the world or be seen. It was all too frightening. Too painful. Too much. And who was she anyway to demand her place in the world when…

She was so little.

Please do know that if you need help, crisis support is available

24 hours, 7 days

Lifeline: 13 11 14
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636
MensLine Australia: 1300 789 978
Kids Helpline: 1800 551 800

or check out some of these links…

Beyond Blue https://www.beyondblue.org.au/

Black Dog Institute https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/

Lifeline https://www.lifeline.org.au/

And this is also a really good article by Australia Counselling outlining different mental health resources in Australia and what they do https://www.australiacounselling.com.au/top-mental-health-organisations/