It’s been a huge year of learning to say the least. And it’s not until upon reflection and calmness that you can fully take in the capacity of the events the last 12 months have brought forward to myself and my partner of 16 years. Finding out that someone you love is diagnosed with cancer is a shock and process time is little as in a mater of days your life gets turned on an axis and you find a whole other word exists you knew little to nothing about.

From diagnosis we choose to embrace the positive of our unknowing journey ahead and being a novice Buddhist we accepted the things we could not change, changed the things we could and embraced the lessons and goodness from all that we would learn and encounter.

Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and more chemotherapy have consumed our everyday.

As an artist l never consciously made a decision for my new pieces to reflect the interactions that now consumed our everyday l just went about creating within the time frames that l could. Most of his happening in the early hours of the morning, which is not out of the ordinary for me anyway.

What l found on those sleepless nights alone was a beautiful place to escape to forget and to get lost in the world were my mind goes to neverland. My work became my saviour without intention or thought and l am thankful for the hours of non reality and escapism it brought to me.

I am not sure if my new works reflect to the outside world my love, hope and fears but within me l am sure.

As a beautiful reward l was honoured to have been named in the Top 3 at the Australian Professional Photography awards in the Illustrative category.

I am sure you can all imagine how close to my heart these images are to me.

An extra note just in case it helps somebody:

Paul was diagnosed with Stage 3 colorectal cancer. His symptoms were minimal just a feeling of fullness, feeling bloated and not being able to empty his bowel fully and a very small amount of blood. There were no pains or obvious sickness. Paul is 44 years old.

If you read this or know somebody with just one of these symptoms, please go to your GP and talk about. Insist on the relevant testing. Our GP was 90% sure that Paul was fine but did a colonoscopy as a simple precaution. That precaution has saved his life. Bowel cancer does not display a lot of symptoms so l urge you of your friend or loved one to go get checked if you have even the slightest amount of doubt. Life is so very precious

X RJ X

Art Imitates Life

Rebecca Croft