Shadow Dancer

Shadow self, walking (with my mobility aide)

It’s been a week and a half since my knee replacement operation. I’m at home, doing mobility exercises three times a day. One of the more enjoyable ones in going for a five minute walk down the street with my mobility walker. First thing in the morning the shadows dance on the road. I notice that I have become a different form, one with extensions.

It led me to thinking about wheels and how they give us freedom to move. When I was little I had a large blue tricycle which I remember riding down the street with mum to go and post a letter at the mailbox. Then when I was nine I learnt to ride a two wheeler bike, falling off until I got the hang of balancing. My first new bike was a red Malvern star. It lasted right through my teenage years as I would explore the back lanes and streets of suburban Melbourne. Such adventuring!

I bought my own new Peugot when I was twenty and took it on the overland train to Western Australia to go exploring. I decked it out with front and rear red panniers, stuffed them with camping gear and set off for the south western corner of that state, feeling fiercely independent.

Now this mobility frame has become my newest aid to independence. I can manoeuvre it around the house and down the street keeping up with my shadow. When I tried to do a drawing in the studio, it was the shape of the walker’s four circular wheels which consumed my thoughts.

Drawing with ink, keeping the lines and form simple helped to dispel the depression which somes from being in pain and feeling vulnerable. It’s uncomfortable living with pain, it has you communing with the shadow sie of yourself.

My early TAFE photographic works were all about shadows. The forms they created that were a part of the object yet separate entities in themselves. Cyclone fences, figures in profile, the shadows made by underpants and socks drying on the country clothes line.

Drawing with shadows was a great start to my plein air drawing in the wetlands. It gave me the forms and shapes of hills in the landscape, the spiky shapes of tangled trees and leaves. It felt like embracing the shadow self, dancing with lines and forms in space.

I wanted to capture that interplay by creating simple ink circles, adding the orange as both contrast and context. Collaging the circles into a square format. A figure dancing with shadows and pain. Then putting a little frame around the collage to put the pain into perspective, giving it parameters, elevating it above the mundane.

I know this is temporary state of being, which is why it is important for me to remember my pain journey. Next week my collages might feature more colour, the sun and grass may appear, the forms might expand and become more fluid. Until then I continue in my routine of pain management; medication, exercise, rest (repeat).

Wheels became circles became ink figures dancing - collage process

Shadow Dancer (framing pain)