Sarah Hazelhurst
Project title: Exploring How Mix Media Helps to Process a Single Trauma Narrative
The act of creating art is a powerful sensation that moves a person to reveal inner parts of themselves into a visual image, by telling a story with visual dialogue. It is further celebrated by presenting it to the public, teachers, and lecturers alike, with the view of igniting fascination and conversation to provide meaning through immersive engagement. The artist or creative person does not present their artwork with the hope of being abused or publicly humiliated.
The body of work explores Sarah’s creative wound, with the desire to heal and overcome authority, power, privilege, control, and abuse in the hope of reclaiming her authorship, passion, dignity, and creative dreams. The research focuses on intersecting the creative wound story/trauma with ten art mediums in light of healing the wound and deepening awareness of the art medium's potential in art therapy.
The art mediums utilised in the artworks include: pencils, oil pastels, black ink, acrylic paint, watercolour paint, textiles, printmaking, collage, clay, and assemblage art which involves 3d objects. The materials have their own story and parameters, directing the exploration through their unique gifts and limitations while helping to inform the creative process, visual expression, and the story that arrives. Each artwork anchors a new perspective on the story, allowing for a holistic view. Which became a visual narrative on trauma that informed Sarah about how her body stored and reacted to this abusive incident.
Art and art therapy are closely related, but also distinctive from each other. They have always been at the heart of Sarah’s art-making processes and concerns when creating art, alongside nature, culture and spirituality. Sarah has been greatly influenced from her family’s creative lineage, as the joy of arts and crafts was passed down to her from the age of three and became an extension of her everyday experience growing up.
Displaying the artwork to the public, teachers and lectures is the last act of the healing journey with this investigation.
Paper Collage on Wood
32cm x 40cm
Calling home various parts of myself, like putting a jigsaw back together
$120.00
Ink on Water Colour Paper
25cm x 35cm
Emerging space of a butterfly from a chrysalis when the wings are not yet dry, and the nervous system first starts to ignite
$95.00
Pencils on Paper
25cm x 35cm
Narrative of the inner child, adolescence and adult self-coming to terms with a traumatic experience around my art practice
$95.00
Water Colour paint on Water Colour paper
25cm x 35cm
Daises are usually yellow and white and feel like summer, these daisies express the frost of winter, numb, frozen likened to being eclipsed by life
Print Making from Nature with Black Printing Ink and Pigments
63cm x 88cm
The creation of a new hybrid self by capturing natures imprint, by joining different species of plants together to create a new organic structure/system.
$150.00
Oil Pastels on Paper
25cm x 35cm
Retracing the point of crisis, but being mindfully aware of it by not reacting to the quivers, tremors and ruptures. Instead, I bought an even pulse to the pressure by tracing it back to its source, and making peace with pain.
$95.00
Assemblage Art, Various Objects Connected as One
45cm in a circumference circle
It has many tales, and the tales are overlapping, in time and space. It has intergenerational connections with objects from my mum and grandma and imagined images of a gallery. It holds a mixture of energy and memories, a rich and diverse place to grow from.
Paper Collage of Photocopies from my Art Journals
63cm x 88cm
The image evolved from a dream, in the dream it showed me the memory skirt as a stable reflective source to anchor the single story I would use to test various mediums on.
$150.00
Textiles Art, Hand Sewing, Cotton on Calico
16cm x 20cm
Embroidery became a slowing experience, where the kinesthetic and sensory touch guided my hands to regenerate my heart. It allowed me to flush out pain, and return my heart to its natural state of being, which is soft, gentle, nurturing and caring.
$150.00
Acrylic Paint on Wood
32cm x 40cm
The Wisteria tree is a source of creative expression, here it protects my soul from the damaging words of others. It helps me to dream and freely wonder in nature for inspiration and ongoing growth.