Finding Peace Through Art: Leonie Edna Brown’s Journey + Part 5

Artist painting abstract landscape in studio

PART FIVE

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Written by Shankar Puri
"We have to face the things that we have gone through. I have to face the fact that people hurt me, but I need to forgive them because if I don’t forgive them, it’s like me drinking the poison and hoping that they will die."

Here’s the fifth part of the story

“In 2000, I started painting again. In 2001, I met my husband. He was the one that also helped heal me, he’s a wonderful man. When you get married, your fears and frustrations you take out on the closest person. You hurt the person you love the most because somebody has to pay. In my case, he had to pay because of what happened to me. I was so angry because of this history of abuse.” She talks with a genuine, vibrant love gleaming in her eyes as she tells me of the man, her husband, who held her close through the tears and the fights and steadied her soul to heal. “Reflecting pain is very emotional.” She lets out a laugh and I follow suit, her story echoing inside of me like the voice of little girl lost down a well.

We begin to talk a bit more about Leonie’s art and her relationship with her paintings, and the whirlwind of emotions that still exist in every stroke of the paintbrush, so many years after what was inflicted upon her.Artist: Lenie E. Brown

“It’s not like a bin that a truck takes away. That rubbish stays there. It’s part of you. You have to take it out, look at it and clean it up. That is, for me, going back to why I paint what I paint. Sitting in that place of darkness doesn’t bring healing. Regurgitating that pain and vomiting it out on the canvas helps. And it might be able to help somebody, somehow, subliminally, to realise there’s is something more for them than this place they are in right now. I don’t want to help people sit in prison, I want to help people get out of the prison of their emotions. I want to create something where somebody can look at it, and if they have gone through the same experience, it brings hope. Hope that they too can heal.”

It’s a powerful emotion, hope. It’s in every corner of Leonie’s paintings, in every layer and in every stroke. Because she projects the way she was able to heal in her work and, looking at it, I am awash with that emotion. “We have to face the things that we have gone through. I have to face the fact that people hurt me, but I need to forgive them because if I don’t forgive them, it’s like me drinking the poison and hoping that they will die.”

I want to learn more about abstract art and specifically, Leonie’s methods, so I move on to asking her about her processes. “I experiment a lot. I combine things that I shouldn’t to see if it works. What I do is very experimental. That’s how I discovered encaustic painting, through experimenting with hot wax and resin.” There’s definitely a freedom about her paintings, a flow that reminds of waves breaking at the shoreline. I ask her if all of her works are experimental.

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Finding Peace Through Art: Leonie Edna Brown’s Journey + Part 4

Artist painting abstract landscape in studio

PART FOUR

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Written by Shankar Puri
"When I did that, I stopped painting for 10 years. When I look back, I did that because I needed to change. Inside.” She points to her heart."

Here’s the fourth part of the story

After Varisty, Leonie tells me how nothing brought her any peace, and despite making New Year’s resolutions to change, to rid the pain from her upbringing, she ended up “building a bigger and bigger wall” and hiding behind those towering, defensive walls was a very lonely girl. But the sheer amicable resilience of her character meant she didn’t give up trying to find hope.

“When I found religion, when I decided to give my life to God, it was the beginning of a change. When I did that, I stopped painting for 10 years. When I look back, I did that because I needed to change. Inside.” She points to her heart. “I left everything, left Pretoria, left my family and everyone and I came to Cape Town. I didn’t have a job and I was alone with my dog. I took the first job I could find, in graphics and started again.” This is the point in the interview where I learn the meaning of the name Leonie: Little girl with a brave heart. She fought off the currents and swam upstream and found herself able to rebuild.

Through the vicissitudes of the ten years, Leonie felt the continual pull back to art. She worked in the corporate world doing graphic design, but despite it teaching her business skills, she said it “was limiting” and she missed the unpredictability of painting an abstract piece. “After the second year of work, it started to become repetitive. It’s Valentine’s Day, it’s this day and this day, you just have to come up with a new design and you already know how to do it but with paintings, you never know what you are going to get! But working was a good learning experience as it taught me valuable business skills.”

But possibly the most momentous lesson learnt, as she was trying to find herself “through a thick forest” of pain was that of trust, which partly came in the form of a female boss. “She didn’t believe in what people said about me but looked at me as a person and as an individual. She taught me that there are people in authority that I can trust.” The building blocks were there with religion and a positive authority figure in the form of her female boss and so Leonie was learning to trust all over again. But she still lacked that person to walk beside her.

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Finding Peace Through Art: Leonie Edna Brown’s Journey + Part 3

Artist painting abstract landscape in studio

PART THREE

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Written by Shankar Puri
"“Psychologically, your brain is amazing. You just shut down. I just decided that this didn’t happen to me. But your soul, your spirit. It’s all there. It’s like a big storm inside of you. "

Here’s the third part of the story

The coffee in my cup has gone cold, but the heat emanating from my hands is enough to trick my mind into thinking that it’s still hot enough to drink. It’s the sheer intensity of the story that causes my palms to feel hot and sweaty. Leonie continues at a pace that leaves me no time to come to terms with her thinking that she was to blame for the death of her stillborn.

“I managed to make matric, I managed to get away from this guy, finally. But even through Varsity (University), it was the same pattern,” Leonie puts her cup down. “Psychologically, your brain is amazing. You just shut down. I just decided that this didn’t happen to me. But your soul, your spirit. It’s all there. It’s like a big storm inside of you. So I did really well at Art in Varsity, but nobody knew what to do with me, because I was unteachable. I didn’t trust anybody. I mean how? Especially me. How do you trust a man?” I nod in agreement, hoping that it comes across in an empathetic way, rather than sympathetic – not in my entire lifetime could I ever feel what she felt.

Leonie made it through the 4 years and received a degree and a diploma in art and teaching. She attributes her success at Varisty to the “risk” she took in studying teaching with art as a second subject to get a bursary, as in her second year she changed her course to only focus on art, something that is strictly forbidden now. She was good at art, she tells me, even has a painting from when she was 15 years old that was so good, her school called up her mother to tell them to stop doing her homework for her. But she never saw herself as an artist or someone who could have a career in art because her mother’s voice hit the notes of self-doubt.

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Finding Peace Through Art: Leonie Edna Brown’s Journey + Part 2

Artist painting abstract landscape in studio

PART TWO

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

Written by Shankar Puri
" It’s the sheer intensity of the story that causes my palms to feel hot and sweaty. "

Here’s the second part of the story

“Alcoholism has a massive impact on children in any case, and abuse teaches you not to trust authority,” Leonie continues to tell me. “You cannot trust anybody and it affects your whole life. I had my first boyfriend when I was fifteen and I was date raped. This guy was obsessed with me and I couldn’t get rid of him. I was basically, for two years, raped three times a week and I had no control over it. I didn’t trust my parents so I couldn’t go to them.”

In the corner of my eye, there’s a painting that I later learned is entitled “Out of the Storm, Into the Light.” Strokes of rust brown, crimson red and mould green combine in terrifying swirls. So much of Leonie’s pain immortalized by the hardening of clay and acrylic paints on canvas.

“Throughout my early life, I ended up with abusive men. Either psychologically abusive, or physically abusive. I was with a guy from when I was about 15 to 18 and he used to beat me, he tried to throttle me a few times, even tried to kill me. I eventually fell pregnant. Not by choice. My mum didn’t take it very well. My mum rejected me. The baby was born at 7 months, dead. I believe the child died because, I, at that point (being a child myself), hated the child. I cursed that child.”

The coffee in my cup has gone cold, but the heat emanating from my hands is enough to trick my mind into thinking that it’s still hot enough to drink. It’s the sheer intensity of the story that causes my palms to feel hot and sweaty. Leonie continues at a pace that leaves me no time to come to terms with her thinking that she was to blame for the death of her stillborn.

LITTLE GIRL WITH A BRAVE HEART

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