How does art help?
How do you convey or make sense of a disaster, when its magnitude is immense?
For some Eurobodalla locals, art offered a way!
Exhibited in the front window of Rustic Pantry Wholefoods (The Pantry), on Moruya’s main street during Art on Parade – RIVER OF ART 2020.
After defending her farm from the fires that raged through Eurobodalla on the morning of New Year’s Eve 2019, Moruya farmer and teacher Cathie Cahill witnessed the second onslaught via international media.
Overseas and adrift from home, Cathie sought solace – and found creative inspiration in an unexpected place…
WOOEE spoke with Cathie Cahill to record her story after sharing her oil painting with community soon after the fires.
Now as we mark two years since the fires were declared out – and as we work for a safer future – WOOEE shares Cathie’s story and artwork to a greater audience, online.
Hi Cathie, I wonder whether you can to tell us a little about the creative process behind your painting Black Summer – After the Fire? The painting has struck such a chord with locals who viewed it in the WOOEE River of Art window front display.
I know it can be difficult to recall these experiences and not long after the fires, but could you tell us a little about how you came to make work?
My work Black Summer – After the Fire is based on the many photographs I took after the fires. I drove over Larry’s Mountain to the west of our valley and was amazed at the scale of the disaster, laid out in front of me. I had already seen and photographed the awful aftermath along the coastal areas after the New Years Eve fires, but I hadn’t seen how much bush had burned to the west. It stretched as far as the eye could see.
” New Years Eve, the preceding days and the aftermath of its horror was the same for me as for most of us who experienced it. We were lucky not to lose our home that day, but the pain and bewilderment I witnessed all around me in those unforgettable days had a profound effect. “
Cathie Cahill
I drove around the area and documented the devastation with my camera. We evacuated in preparation for the next round, fleeing for safety along with so many hundreds of others.
The inspiration for this work, however, came to me in an unexpected way. I had a trip booked to London to visit my elderly parents in mid-January – it wasn’t an ideal time to be going, but we were told the worst was over. Visitors were being invited back to the shire.
Can you share something about that time with us Cathie, and some of what you were experiencing while over 10,000 miles away from home?
So I made the trip with my youngest son. We arrived in London to the news that the Eurobodalla was on fire again, and this time the fires had come even closer to our home. I was highly anxious, almost in a panic, being so far away while this was happening and I don’t think I realised how traumatised I was until then. The shock and horror hadn’t sunk in until I was far away. Seeing Australia on the news from the other side of the world, it hit me. At the sight of a burned koala, I burst into tears.
The next day, with the threat of fire at home still encroaching, I took my son to see some of London to attempt to take my mind off what was happening. At the Tate Modern gallery, we entered an area entitled ‘Art after Catastrophe’. The entrance sign explained that artists looked for new ways to represent humanity and our world after the catastrophic events of WWII. I had a sudden epiphany.
The art I saw there is was what inspired me to create Black Summer and other works to document what we had been through. I knew it would also be cathartic – and I badly needed to process my feelings.
Wow, Cathie what a full on roller coaster of feelings while physically separated from your loved ones at home. I believe your return to Moruya also held some unexpected contrasts too?
On my return to Australia, I wept on arriving at the gate to our property and seeing the lush green grass, the creek flowing.
I had left it brown, withered, desiccated and smoky. I could see the charred hills and mountains surrounding Moruya, a stark contrast to the green and the water below.
You’ve used charcoal and collage in a highly sensory and quite a temporal way. Can you tell us more about your use of mediums?
I immediately explored the bush and the beaches to collect debris from the fires. My visit to the Tate Modern had made me realise I could go one step further from simple oil painting.
I wanted to incorporate the reality of the fires into the artwork – actual burned gum leaves, charcoal from the burned wood. I thought long and hard about how to create something meaningful. I considered that there were no limits – an artwork could document the experiences of our people with not just paint but photography and collage and anything else which would fully express what we had been through.
I used the charcoal to draw parts of the trees – that felt important to me – a piece of an actual tree that burned in the fires would live on in its depiction of a tree.
The actual creation of the artwork was an experiment. I’d never used collage before. I didn’t know whether using the materials would ‘work’. All I knew was that I had to express my feelings that would somehow connect to other people. I used the charcoal to draw parts of the trees – that felt important to me; a piece of an actual tree that burned in the fires would live on in its depiction of a tree.
The Black Summer bushfire has had a profound effect on our whole community. How have you found the community response to your work, and now, six months after the fires do you feel about your local community?
The connection I feel to this land has strengthened massively after the fires. I feel a fierce love for the place and its people in a way I didn’t before. I know many others feel the same. I wanted to share the artwork when it was finished; it was an important part of the process. I posted a photo to a couple of post-bushfire and community groups and the response overwhelmed me. The comments revealed that many other people shared my feelings, shared that connection because of what we had been through:
‘Made me so emotional… Thank you for sharing your artistic expressions.’
‘With 50 years of bushfire fighting, it is a scene that I’ve seen many times. Your portrait is as real as it gets.’
‘I love this. I will be looking for art when our home is rebuilt. As strange as it sounds, we can’t ignore what happened, so I would totally hang something like this in my home. It’s a part of who we are now.’
I really hope that we can maintain this connection to each other in the Eurobodalla during our current challenges and into the future.
I hope that we can come together and listen to each other over the topic of bushfires in the future, rather than blaming and scoring political points. Given that New South Wales has never before experienced a whole summer of megafires such as we’ve just experienced, I hope our leaders will make sensible decisions concerning climate change and bushfire prevention.
See excerpts from Tate Modern’s ‘Art After Catastrophe‘ exhibition
A wiki overview of Black Summer’s geographical scale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bushfire_season
See also What can fire maps and historical records tell us? https://withourowneyeseurobodalla.org/past-fires/
WOOEE March 2022
It’s not uncommon for bushfire survivors to describe the intensity and the aftermath of the 2019-2020 fires, as being like finding one’s self in a war zone. READ MORE OVER THE PAGE