‘My picture depicts my lived experience of deep listening and learnings from mentors and valued people about culture, family and giving selflessly. The print selected depicts the 3 communities where I lived and worked to be best support for people to live free of violence and in a safe and secure space. The woman and children I encounter is gifted with what has become known as “gold nuggets”. The wisdom passed down to me from my mum, my 2 sisters and my brother about keeping one safe is the responsibility of the individual. My knowledge gained from lived experience from a child to adulthood is the golden information (nuggets) that others can now obtain to make better choices for themselves. It’s not forced it’s gifted and many have accepted having removed themselves to safety…
– Mary
- Title: Solid Gold Nuggets
- Artist: Mary
- Year: 2024
- Medium: Appliqué and thread with gold acrylic on fabric
So, for my painting I’ve chosen Aboriginal pink and there are circles, which always mean community to me. Wherever I see an Aboriginal print and circles, it means community, mean family, the community unit or something like that. So, there’s three…. It represents the three communities and then down the bottom there’s a whole equals those people and networks. So, the circles represent the communities that I’ve lived in, and that I grew up in. Off the circles are these branches, that are my former Aunt. So, the top branch represents my mum, my two sisters and my brother. Growing up role modelling, there’s other little parts on top and it’s like little shell things off the side that represented family, community and sharing culture, and then on the other side, where I’ve seen them cheat and share. I’ve learned about DV [domestic violence], a little about mental health so they represented all those. Around that are gold little dots. The gold dots represented all the way through is what I learned from them. So, wisdom. Now to be able to take from them and then pour into the next community, which is where I started to work in DV [domestic violence] in1999, and across the accommodation. The biggest thing that I wanted to pick up was, like I said, prevention, but in between getting from one community to the other, you’ll see there’s a flower. Flower represents my mum, but she’s now passed on. But everything that I learned about DV [domestic violence], even my work today was what I’d seen the inner strength from her of how she was a victim of DV [domestic violence]. She never lived like a victim of DV [domestic violence]. She never took on all of the labelling that comes with DV [domestic violence]. She was a strong mum. She had like I said 13, but she’d lost two and three to stillborn. So, she had all of these crises that happen in life and was able to raise her children to become the men and women that we are today. So, she’s there, the flower. The next one is what I chose out of life eventually was then to become prevention against domestic and family violence to be able to help women, men, but also anybody that was in a crisis. So, there’s an upper circle and the upper circle represented where I chose my life journey, which was prevention of DV [domestic violence].’
– Mary