The 7 Steps Away from Your Bed

Ness runs creative workshops in and with communities residing on Quandamooka lands and sea. Living with chronic pain, Ness plays with multiple art forms in different settings: clay, paint, punk fests, knitting gangs, community events, and art exhibitions. Every time Ness creates something, she lets something go; her inspiration coming from a wide and wild range of lived and living experience. After Ness's psychiatrist asked her what she liked doing as a kid and she responded, 'drawing and making art', she started finding ways to bleed out the loss, grief, and anger through creativity. Art allows Ness to heal, while helping others to do the same.

'The 7 Steps Away from Your Bed' reflects the act of walking away from a loved one who has passed over, after tending their bed for weeks, months, years. The grief cycle tracks the path through the moments, hours, days after. The figures appear in the order of their visits to me; I had to open up and let them in for them to pass. In the words of Florence Welch, 'I'm not giving up, I'm just giving in.'