When Sonja Elise felt her world was crumbling around her last year she turned to art to unleash her feelings about her world.
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It was a move that saved her life and now she is sharing her journey through an exhibit at the Hunter Artisan Gallery and Cafe in East Maitland, which opened on Thursday.
“It was my way of dealing with it – there was a lot of anger in it – now it’s going through a period of change because I’m going through change myself,” she said.
“It’s become so much brighter – I’m a positive person and it’s an exciting time for me.
“My mental capacity has changed a lot over the last 10 months, so my art is changing.”
Sonja Elise was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bipolar and borderline personality disorder when she made the decision to recreate her life on paper with acrylic paint.
“I was always taught never to write anything down, I’ve now changed that, I write everything down,” she said.
“My art gave me the opportunity to get what’s in my head onto paper.
“You put all of your bad feelings out onto the canvas and then you alter it so it becomes more of a positive piece.
“In doing that you are changing the neural pathways in your brain from negative to positive and it’s the only way I can do it now.”
Ms Elise said she always looked for the positive things in her life, but she couldn’t find them until she started using paint to portray her life.
“I was so bogged down with depression and anxiety that it was an awful, awful time,” she said.
“I’ve spent the past 10 months living down in Newcastle with my daughter, starting to get well again. My art has been huge in dealing with all of that.
“If you had known me 10 months ago, or even six months ago, I was an absolute mess. I was still crying in my Weet-Bix.
“In the last three months this lightning bolt of bright lights hit me – art is my everything.”
Ms Elise praised businesswoman Jenni Nichols for offering grassroots artists gallery space in the Old George and Dragon restaurant on Melbourne Street.
She said it was hard for artists to get their work in front of the public.
Knowing people would be looking at her work was a huge compliment, she said.
The gallery and cafe will open Thursday to Sunday between 10am and 4pm.
Ms Nichols will offer a simple cafe menu with affordable slow cooked meals and heartwarming food as well as a range of delicious treats.
She hopes the cafe will entice people to stay a while and look at the art work and other creations.
All of the works at the gallery are for sale.
Ms Elise took herself to Newcastle Art School in February where she became inspired and gradually added technical skills to her repertoire.
“It always seemed to come naturally to me, but now I’m starting to get the technical skills underneath that … In the next 10 years I’m going to be well-known for my art,” she said.
“All of my work is colour based, it’s a heavy concentration of colour which shows off the contrast between the colours as well.
“I’m really into graphic, graffiti style – geometric balance.”
She moved into art nine years ago and soon found her niche in abstract, expressionist, creations.
“I had a particularly bad time, I was bullied at work and I had to leave because of that ... I didn’t know how to deal with it and my art helped with that.
“I’ve also had a lot of grief in the past six years.”
Ms Elise said viewers often thought there were people in her work among all of the colours.
“I like to bring figures into it, but they aren’t figures in the normal sense of the word,” she said.
“They’re more ghostly, like spirits - we have a natural obsession with faces and if you look at an abstract work you often see faces come through.
“I look to that, I see things in my work and I pick out bits and pieces to bring it forward.
“My pieces are becoming even more complex.”
Ms Elise can create a single work in three days.
She says it’s off trend to sign your own work these days, and doing that helps to set her apart.