Artistic Statement
Together this collaboration of watercolours and poems is a response to loss and longing. The art is by a person in the stages of losing her life, and the poetry is by her partner in the stages of dealing with her loss. Susan Joy Nevile began watercolour painting in her final months when her terminal illness left her unable to quilt – her usual form of creative expression. Maurice Nevile began to write short-form poetry, mostly haiku and senryu, soon after Susan Joy passed away, at first to help understand and process grief, and then as a new form and direction for writing.
Losing
one hand on the wheel
one hand on hers
the last drive
—
a last gift
her daughter picks
a blossom
—
caressing
a blossom
her last afternoon
—
one petal
resists the breeze
losing her
Finding
leaving
her clothes folded
her shoes by the door
—
sun setting
on the stone
her name in gold
—
waking dark
falling rain
missing her
—
I find her
walking the path
we knew together
Knowing
—
every day
still talking to you
sorry
—
in glass
a frond furled
our future
—
windy skies
I know you’re dancing
with the trees
—
who is gone
who is left
widowhood
Maurice Nevile lives in Canberra, Australia. He published and edited for thirty years as a research academic in the social sciences, holding university positions in Australia, Denmark, and Finland. His haiku and senryu poems have appeared in the journals Modern Haiku, cattails, Stardust, Kingfisher, Failed Haiku, Prune Juice, and Echidna Tracks, and at the website of The Haiku Foundation and the Australian Haiku Society. Maurice was asked to prepare short form poems in response to art for the exhibition ‘Why water?’, to be held in 2022 for the Water Justice Hub at the Australian National University.
Susan Joy Nevile passed away in 2018, in Canberra, Australia, after a year-long illness. She was passionate about exploring colour and shape in her quilting and turned to watercolour painting in her last months after a chance meeting at hospital with an art therapist. Susan Joy was a qualified teacher and had over twenty years’ experience as a hospice/hospital pastoral carer, school chaplain, and volunteer phone crisis counsellor.