EDUCATION

As a cult female I could not look forward to an education.

Girls were to be educated in home skills by their mothers, married to a cult man, and then to start another cult family to expand god’s work.

There was no career for me, however much I loved learning.

I loved going to school and finding out things. I was an intelligent and interested learner. I loved geography and music. I was sent for private music lessons so that I would be useful for god’s cult services where I was coerced into playing the piano. I played for almost every service for fourteen years, with never a ‘thank you’ but always told if I did something wrong.

Both upstairs and downstairs at the temple there were large black grand pianos, but I was never given the opportunity to play them at my leisure or for my own enjoyment. I had to play a certain way for congregational singing all the while being conducted by and under the watchful eye of the service leader in the pulpit.

I was sent to school as the law required. I finished school after staying for bursary year even though I did not sit the bursary exams because what use would that qualification be to me?

I enjoyed passing exams in music and school because I felt like I was achieving something to feel good about. In the cult I was just a nothing; an unimportant nobody and servant to everybody according to god’s will.

The Recovering Artist.

Painting into the emotion of my experiences in the cult I was raised from birth in has helped to bring emotional healing and clarity to me as I seek ongoing recovery from my abusive restrictive former existence.

I was not able to begin to consider painting anything until I left the cult after 43 years of submission and obedience where the practise of art was considered a waste of god’s time, and something not to be pursued or tolerated.

I am now a self-motivated artist who has benefitted from being a member of several amateur art groups. I observe and learn from others, but am always filtering and interpreting my art though my own life experience. My current mentor has been particularly helpful in guiding and letting me develop my style in my own way. Quite often I am surprised at what I paint but I understand the wisdom that is coming from within.

I paint my own ideas from my own pain and this often enables reflection and abstract interpretation of the memories and emotional experiences forced on me by my father and others who were leaders in this cult system of religion.

The Recovering Artist.

Becoming an Artist