How Indigenous art comforted me when my Mum died

Groves, 49, says he has no doubt about the power of art to heal heartache and has used it himself to deal with the trauma he felt after a young man tried to kill himself one night outside his three-year-old gallery – a painful reminder of his town’s continuing suicide crisis. He also runs weekend art classes for people struggling with problems.

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Therapist and visual artist Caroline Eshak-Liuzzi, chief executive of Creative Art Therapy Australiais another great believer in art being able to lessen the pain of grief and bring light into the darkness. Working in palliative care with young children and oncology patients and their families, she uses art – either with an artist painting young people’s stories or people painting their own – as a way of helping people move on from grief and anger.

“Art therapy can bring closure and provides a way to let go and process emotions and regret,” says Eshak-Liuzzi. “It’s the process of art that’s the enabler for the processing of emotions.

“If you hold a book right up to your eyes, you can’t make out the words; you need distance between your eyes and the page. In the same way, art creates the distance between your mind and the problem and negative emotions.”

I know what she means.

I’ve found my new artwork, somehow, incredibly comforting and every time I look at it, I smile and think of Mum’s spirit cavorting with her parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Actual participation in art, research has found, can also result in significant improvements in mood and cognition, delivering creativity and calm, according to Dr Joanna Jaaniste, an adjunct fellow of Western Sydney University in the social sciences and psychology unit.

Buying, or commissioning, a piece of art to mark life’s major milestones – sad or happy – can offer great solace, says art adviser James Dorahy. He even commissioned portraits of his beloved two dogs to commemorate their passing.

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“It’s a modern memorial, if you like, being able to look at something you associate with the subject,” he says. “When my father died, I used some of the money he left to buy a Regina Pilawuk Wilson work and every time I look at it, I remember him and smile and feel connected to him.”

My artwork, which absolutely glows with love and care and affection, is now in pride of place on my bedroom wall, where I can see it as soon as I wake up and it is the last thing I see at night.

I’m still incredibly sad, of course, to have lost my gorgeous, vivacious and hilariously funny Mum way before her time but, somehow, the experts are right. I feel I’ve retained something of her energy and spirit and warmth and beauty, captured forever on the canvas. And I’m convinced she would have loved Groves as much as he so lovingly channelled her.

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