Drawing as a Vital Act

When I was putting the book together a friend asked me, “Why did you draw so much?” as she saw piles of over 100 Sennelier drawing pads stacked one on top of eachother in my studio in South India.

The thing is, that I never planned to draw. I was a photographer before this all happened and I had an affinity with the medium of photography. The camera was an extension of myself and I had this connection with people that was extremely natural, and you could see this in each portrait I took.

Photography requires movement. I knew that from a bed, the possibilities of photographing were going to be very limited and as a part of my treatment I was going to be stuck in bed, isolated in a radiation room, undergoing treatment for 20 minutes every hour/ 24 hours a day / 7 days, I knew I needed an alternative to channel my creativity.

Part of my preparation for radiation treatment at Institut Marie Curie in Paris was a visit to an art store where I bought white Italian clay, acrylic paints, pencils, drawing pads, fimo and sennelier oil pastels. I packed these into my bag for my 7 day hospital stay. I also added a small camera, some movies, 2 books, crochet hooks and wool and my notebook.

The night before I was in the radiation room alone waiting for my 5am wake up call to take me into surgery to insert the radiation rod inside me. Terror rose. I picked up the oil pastels for the first time and drew the sensations of terror inside my body directly onto the page.

When radiation began, it felt like bullets shooting up my vagina. I began to burn internally. The experience was horrific and I knew I could not move because that would move the radiation rod which was inserted in me. Nothing could console me. No book, no movie, the written word, crocheting… nothing. I was alone with the radiation machine.

I reached out for the oil pastels and began to place colour on the page, and just as I had done the previous night, tuned in directly to each emotion I was experiencing. And then I would get another colour, and tune in again. And this way, I kept laying colours on top of eachother, kept feeling into each emotion. And then I started to scratch on the layers and other colours appeared. Each drawing was my lifeline. A vital act. Each drawing was also an anchor for me to remain connected to myself and to not lose my mind.

Printing I AM ALIVE

I thought it was going to be an easy enough process. I was wrong.

The last few months putting the book together had been grueling. In retrospect, I should have got on a plane and finished the book with the designer and publisher in person. There is such value in working face to face. Another mistake learnt.

On May 5, earlier this year, I arrived in Stuttgart, Germany to print my latest book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art.

I had attended the printing of my catalogue, Love it and Leave it - Australia’s Creative Diaspora. We had printed in Singapore. It was black and white and a very smooth process. My imagination never went to the space that it could be a vastly different experience/

So what was the difference between the prints?

Very simply: the personal…

Love it and Leave was about other people’s stories.

I am Alive is my story.

Every drawing in the book has an aspect of my soul imprinted into it. There are the drawings from when I am being burnt alive. The drawing from when I am fighting for my life. The drawing from when I want it all to end. The drawing of not coping. There are drawings of trauma, depression, grief in all their colours. I lived them. Each of them is a part of me.

To see these images each with a fragment of my soul be spat out of the printing press at such a high speed was dizzying and overwhelming. The emotions of this triggered the sensations of going through cancer treatment again… How could I explain this to anyone around me? I couldn’t find the vocabulary. And printing this book was a professional setting: I needed to stay cool and centred. The machines were dedicated to bringing my book into reality that day. Tomorrow was reserved for another book. This was not the day to fall apart. All I wanted to do was hide and cry. At one part of the day I found myself in the toilet, gathering my sense of being. I wished so deeply that I was not going through this alone. I knew I really needed someone by my side… but how could I have known I was going to be triggered like this? I thought I was over the trauma of my treatment. That was 16 years ago… How could I be reacting this much? I reminded myself of how much I had worked to recover.

Breathe deeply. Come back to my body.

I got through the day and went to the main station to get a train to Frankfurt. I was early and sat on the platform. My head in my hands. I was enraged with how the day had gone. I should have been more careful, I should have foreseen to accompany me today, someone to help me through this. I was done. I called a friend, “I never ever want to see that book again. I want it all to be thrown away. This was not worth it. **** it.”

A month later, when the first book arrived, I felt no joy. I was still overcome by the experience that had happened in Stuttgart. This is a sign for that things are not OK and that I still need to pay attention to what is going on.

Time plays such an important part of healing. Time and focused attention on the issue - which is what I did. I took care of the parts of me that hadn’t felt safe, that were overwhelmed by time in the printing, that confused the printing with me being in radiation. Separated. Brought back together. Whole.

And now, two months later, I have come to befriend the book. I am ready to share it with others and let it reveal its journey to me.

Printing of I AM ALIVE in Stuttgart, Germany

Offset printing - I was being shown how each colour is measured.

I AM ALIVE : Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art

My new book, I AM ALIVE - Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art is coming out this Autumn and I want to share behind the scenes of making the book (which took a whopping 16 years)… yes, you read correctly 16 years.

The book was described as, “An unflinching and luminous account of illness, faith, resilience, and the transformative role of art in finding one’s way back to life.”

The story begins in 2009. This is the first chapter to give you an idea of how the story kicks off:

—————————————————

The doctor clicks her pen, looks down at the worn carpet where her feet

follow the swivel of the chair. She doesn’t look me in the eye. “You have

Stage 3 cervical cancer.”

Then she tells me in a matter-of-fact manner, “We do not know yet if the

cancer has spread to your lymph nodes. If it has, the survival rate is low.”

I can no longer feel the chair beneath me.

What else is she saying?

A roaring silence fills me.

I am free-falling through the sky. No parachute. Nothing to hold onto.

Is this it? I am 39 years old.

—————————————————

The book is primarily drawings that I began in hospital, the night before brachytherapy (radiation for cervical cancer) and I continued to draw over the following 7 years as I navigated through the depths of depression, physical healing from very intensive radiation and the tricky pathways or recovering from PTSD. Until I slowly, every so slowly returned to life. Drawing was an urgent lifeline, my witness that I still existed in this world.

By the time I had forged my way through the seven year journey of returning to life, my drawings had changed profoundly. Drawing became an opportunity to spend quiet time with myself (which I really appreciated). These times gave me access to listen to what my soul wanted to draw, to express.

The reader essentially gets to see this arc of 14 years of drawings within 184 pages, along with a text that gives context to the drawings.

Below, is the book cover which is a self portrait of me during brachytherapy radiation. It may look like a very simple drawing. However, the experience of radiation was so traumatising that it took me 3.5 years before I could draw this image of my experience.

So now is the time to share this work… so I will be posting more! Stay tuned!

How did I start drawing?

It’s a question I’m often asked, and the answer takes me back to a time before my treatment for Stage 3 cervical cancer. I was a photographer and filmmaker—drawing had never been part of my creative process, aside from the occasional doodle in a notebook. But everything shifted when I was preparing for a seven-day brachytherapy radiation treatment at Institut Marie Curie in Paris. I knew I would be confined to a bed for continuous radiation, and I needed more than just physical items to bring with me—I needed tools that would help me mentally navigate the ordeal.

The idea of being "pinned down" felt suffocating, but I wanted to turn it into an opportunity for expression. I carefully curated a list of items that would keep me occupied and help me process the experience through creativity. Drawing, as it turned out, was one of the first things I thought of.

Here’s what I packed:

• Books

• Ink for drawing

• Sennelier oil pastels

• Notebook for writing

• DVDs (comedies)

• FIMO (colorful plasticine)

• Crocheting supplies

• Camera

• Blog to update daily

• Paint and canvas

• White Italian clay (small batches)

• Sticky tape, glue, scissors

• Sound therapy machine

My bag for the hospital was also filled with a folder of all the cards and messages loved ones had sent me, as well as all the items mentioned above. These creative materials became more than just items—they were lifelines. Each of them, in their own way, helped me reclaim some control over my body and mind, and drawing, in particular, became a way for me to transform my inner world into something tangible.

The act of creating during that time, no matter how small or imperfect, became an essential part of my healing. And in that hospital bed, I began to draw for the first time. It wasn’t just about surviving the treatment—it was about finding a way to express the complexities of my experience. Drawing gave me a voice when words failed. It allowed me to connect with a part of myself I hadn’t known before—a part that still needed to be seen, even in the midst of pain and uncertainty.

Radiation Begins

There was a strange dance that unfolded over the next seven days—a rhythm dictated by the relentless pulse of the radiation machine. Every hour, without fail, the machine would roar to life, delivering its charge 24 hours a day. I lay there, pinned down, as the machine worked tirelessly to destroy the cancerous cells within me. Yet, while parts of me were being "cooked" and destroyed, I felt a connection to something deeper. I clung to the mantras I silently chanted, feeling the universal life-force flow through me. It was as though, in the midst of cellular destruction, I was simultaneously being held by a force larger than myself, keeping me grounded, keeping me alive, even as parts of me died.

This contradiction—of life and death intertwined—was disorienting. The physical reality was undeniable: my body was breaking down, and my cells attacked hour by hour, minute by minute. I felt trapped, imprisoned in a position that I couldn’t escape. The radiation schedule was brutal—25 minutes of radiation, followed by the desperate attempt to catch fleeting moments of sleep before the machine would start again. My back ached constantly from being unable to move, and the desire to simply stand and stretch became an obsession. The inability to act on this need only deepened the sense of captivity. I was pinned down, both literally and metaphorically.

Words, at that moment, were useless. How could they capture the violence of what was happening to me? The pain, the intensity, the inescapable sensation of being torn apart from the inside—it was beyond articulation. The tools I had brought to pass the time—books, clay, crocheting—became meaningless in the face of this all-consuming experience. The thought of using them felt absurd, irrelevant. But the oil pastels… they were different.

The oil pastels allowed me to access something beyond words. There, in that sterile, confined space, their vivid colors became my lifeline. Drawing wasn’t just a distraction; it was survival. I could take those pastels and scratch at the paper, releasing through lines and color the unspeakable terror I was enduring. The act of drawing was raw, almost primal. It wasn’t about creating something beautiful; it was about expressing the inexpressible, making visible the emotions that words could never convey.

Every stroke of pastel across the paper felt like a release. Each line, each curve, mirrored the internal chaos, the pain, the fear, the strange dance between destruction and life. The colors—bold and aggressive—became a reflection of what was happening inside me. I didn’t have to explain or rationalize; I simply let the pastels do the talking. This act of creation, of making something tangible out of my suffering, became a way to cope with the violence I was experiencing. In the midst of radiation, in the moments where I could not move, drawing allowed me to escape in a way nothing else could.

In those seven days, I discovered a new language—one born from necessity, from the depths of my struggle. The colors of the oil pastels helped me access the unspeakable, transforming the horror of radiation into something I could see, something I could control, even if just for a moment. It was not about art or beauty. It was about survival.

Staying Sane

During radiation, I needed to stay sane. I knew that the relentless grind of treatment could push me over the edge, could make me lose my grip on reality if I didn’t find a way to ground myself. I focused on chanting mantras internally, drawing on that connection to a life-force beyond my physical experience, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to express myself, to give voice to the chaos inside. In these moments, I would reach for my drawing pad.

Pinned down on my back, unable to move freely, it was important that the pad was small enough to hold with my left hand while I drew with my right. My movements were restricted, but even within those limitations, I could still create. I tuned in to what I was feeling in each moment, letting the raw intensity of my emotions guide me. Deep green, grey, sky blue, red—each color had a meaning, each hue a reflection of something simmering inside.

I’d begin with the first layer: a thick, opaque surface of oil pastel that mirrored the emotion demanding to be felt. I pressed the color into the page, letting it take shape, building a layer of that particular feeling until something shifted within me. The change happened once the emotion had been heard, acknowledged. These feelings, however intense, didn’t just want to be experienced—they wanted to be expressed.

Once that layer was complete, I’d pause, listen again. What emotion was next? Which feeling wanted to make itself known? I’d reach for another color, layering it over the first, sometimes completely covering the original color, sometimes letting them coexist. Each stroke of pastel carried a weight, a message, a release. I listened, responded, and let the emotions dictate what color came next, which direction to take. The process was deeply meditative, each step a dialogue between me and the experience unfolding within me.

As I drew, tiny balls of oil pastel gathered on the page, little round bits of wax that collected on the white hospital sheets beneath me. They smeared and smudged, staining the sterile environment with color and life. In that space, amidst the medical machinery and the cold, clinical surroundings, I found warmth in those smears of color.

Then came the scratching. I’d take a bamboo pencil and carve into the layers, etching the unspoken words that needed to be released:

Help.
This feels too hard.
Only 103 hours left of radiation.

Each time I scratched away at the colors, my emotions carved into the page, my mind found a place to travel—a place where I could escape the relentlessness of radiation. The simple act of drawing gave me access to life, to the deepest part of my internal being. Radiation felt like an attack, like my body was being burnt alive from the inside, but drawing was my way of fighting back. It allowed me to reclaim a sense of control, to create in the midst of destruction.

The art I created wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone else. It wasn’t about beauty or aesthetics—it was about survival. Each stroke, each layer, was a lifeline. The act of creating in that moment felt vital, as though it was the only thing keeping me tethered to myself.