heart work: why i do what i do

Recently a friend of mine described my Art Work as Heart Work and it made me think more seriously of why I do what I do: paint human beings celebrating their lives, their selves. I often reflect on the words of feminist activist Emma Goldman: “A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having” and I know this is the undercurrent moving through my work. Images of Bishop Desmond Tutu also permeate my thoughts as I see him dancing freely up on stage at a ceremony I saw a few years ago on television. I remember thinking here is an image of hope and resilience in the face of unimaginable pain and grief.

My Grenada family friends and community are the foundation of my Heart work. They have taught me hope, strength, resilience, courage and resourcefulness in the face of life’s difficult moments. I have learned and continue to learn the fine balance between hope and despair and the power of music, dance, storytelling, poetry, and laughter in healing and revolutionizing.

I left Canada in 1993 to work overseas for two years with a small non government organization from Toronto. However before making this two year commitment I set out on my own after completing my Bachelor of Arts degree and traveled. I traveled for 10 months to Thailand, Nepal, India and Indonesia. It was while traveling through some of the more poverty stricken areas of these countries that I began to understand what privilege meant. I was one of the privileged. I struggled with this more in the realm of guilt rather than understanding further why I was privileged and how that privilege worked for me. It wasn’t until I moved to Grenada that I began to transform my guilt of being privileged to a more useful emotion that of anger and then compassion. I began to look at this world with a more critical eye. I started to ask the question “why?” which continues to be my method of critically analyzing the unjust systems that create such a wide gap between the privileged and the non privileged. I began to ask: “Why was I born with so many choices and opportunities and my brethren and sistren in the village were not? Why have I been dealt the winning hand of cards that lets me pass go over and over while many friends in Grenada and throughout the world struggle daily just to survive each hard day. I soon realized the more we are given in this world the larger our responsibility is and therefore I began to use my life in a more responsible and conscious way. I began to work more consciously on my self so that I could be of better use to the world and began to explore my own potential as an agent and ally of change both within myself and within the outside worlds that I found myself.

I began doing this while working with a community women’s group in Grenada that came together to teach one another various local crafts. I worked with adult literacy branch of the national college in Grenada and helped incorporate within a women’s craft group a literacy component that led to facilitating a process of personal and group empowerment. The program involved women exploring, discovering and exercising our inherent power to create changes in our lives and within our communities. We wrote letters of protest to the local newspapers concerning police violence against women, we performed community dramas addressing various forms of violence within our society, we wrote our life stories and shared with others in a booklet style; and we created a story quilt which we exhibited at local art and craft shows. After the program ended there were many examples of how we found our inherent strengths and potential to effect change. For example one of the participants went back to school to finish her School Leaving degree and pursued her dreams of becoming a nurse; another participant became a leader in her own community and formed a community group of women crafters; another participant filled out various forms for visa applications and traveled to Canada to visit her mother; and another participant began selling her craft to local markets.

I too found a renewed sense of self and started exploring the power of self and community on canvas through painting women celebrating their lives. I began to paint the strength, courage and resilience of women I experienced on a day to day basis in Grenada and these same women kept showing up on canvas over and over which led me to a particular style of colour and figures. This style of movements represent for me, the power within we all possess, even in the face of life’s hardships, tragedies and difficult moments. With encouragement from friends in both Grenada and Canada I began to show my ladies in various venues and they began to take on a life of their own and somewhere within all of this became a source of income for myself and family but also a source of income for community youth peace projects in Grenada.

This past year the Harford Village Peace Workers were formed. The group formed in response to the rising violence amongst youths on the island and within our community specifically. We are a small group of four youth leaders and two elders from Harford Village. The main objective of peace programs is to provide a safe, positive and child friendly environment where kids feel safe, respected and valued while engaged in various activities that promote living values such as peace, conflict resolution, self love, empathy, respect, gratitude and other living values that promote a culture of peace. Kids are encouraged to learn and practice youth-centred conflict resolution and peace building strategies using various expressions of art, including dance, spoken word, story telling, drama, visual arts and in the near future photography.

Plans for the future involve strengthening the connections between my art/heart work and community empowerment programs. I plan to write more about my experiences in Grenada in order to create a broader awareness for the need of teaching peace side by side with various artistic expressions. I want to explore further the empowering effects of art and its ability to create cultures of peace within our selves, our families, our communities and our world.

I give thanks and praise to these vibrant, moving, healing, empowered, strong, courageous women that continue to stroll, dance, drum, cartwheel, raise fists in solidarity, and simply move through me and onto the canvas! They continue to be a great source of strength courage and healing as I dive deep into many different world’s and experience the fine balance between hope and despair.