By Jill Fraser
Yarra Valley artist Olene Simon has turned the page on an exciting new chapter.
What began as the catalyst for a life-altering turning point during a long battle with depression has become the lens through which Olene views life and the reason she brings a Zen-like focus to painting.
When working as an art tutor at Rivendell Mental Health Centre, Olene began introducing techniques and insights that had helped her weather many challenging months and which she credits with disclosing the lost skill of transmuting mental health symptoms into creativity.
Galvanised by her own healing and the way art featured in the healing of her students’ troubled minds, she began exploring the power of creativity.
This led to a deep dive into the symbiotic relationship between art and mental health and the associated therapeutic benefits.
“When you’re painting, you’re no longer thinking about what’s going on in your life. You’re an observer. You’re witnessing what’s occurring on the paper,” she said.
“Creativity bypasses the intellect. Watercolour in particular allows a freedom of expression that’s a fundamental human right.”
Olene, a descendent of artist Norman Lindsay, sank into “a black hole of misery” following the death of her mother and sister.
“I was halfway through a course at the Victorian College of the Arts when I chose an essay topic that opened up a well of misery,” she said.
“The tears wouldn’t stop. I felt I couldn’t walk out the door of my house. I literally stopped functioning.”
Her previous work with the Brain Foundation served as motivation for her to become her own art therapist.
“I kept saying to myself: You believe in the power of art so why are you spending all day every day eating chocolate and watching television? What a waste of everything you’ve learned and done,” Olene said.
“I pushed myself. I can still hear myself saying, ‘just do it for 10 mins, Olene’.
“I found little strips of paper and my favourite brushes and forced myself to paint every night until I suddenly realised, I was enjoying what I was doing. I made a bargain with myself to do it every night because I was cognitive enough to recognise the pointlessness of escaping into television land and devouring chocolate.”
She recalls the first time she identified the art and mind intersection.
It was early in her career when she was teaching at Sherbrooke Art Society.
“A lady with a disability always insisted on using the back stairs like everyone else,” Olene said.
“It was a heck of a climb so I told her I could open the front door. I clearly remember her saying: ‘thanks but once I start painting, I’m fine. I don’t feel any pain.”
Musing, Olene continued: “Another student said something similar. She told me, ‘I don’t feel any pain when I’m doing my watercolour’. That sowed the seed.”
Sitting in the grounds of a landmark A-Frame on Warburton Highway, Launching Place in which she is currently holding a retrospective of dozens of her art works, she talks of why she needs to let go her former paintings before she can move into her next chapter.
“In part it’s that old cliché of one door needing to close before you find the creative impetus to move forward. And from a purely pragmatic perspective, I’ve been so prolific I need the physical space,” she laughed.
Asked if she plans to continue looking into art as therapy while working on new canvases, Olene replied, “Absolutely. It’s who I am and a big part of what I do, whether consciously or not.”
Olene Simon’s A-Frame Art retrospective exhibition opens from 11am to 4pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays 2010 Warburton Highway, Launching Place. Entry Carter Street.
