Working as a general practitioner in the Kimberley region in Western Australia’s far north, Simon Hemsley was struggling with his mental health and turned to painting to cope.
“For me it was a choice, painting or Prozac. I had to do something,” Dr Hemsley said.
Now as a successful artist based in the south west town of Bunbury, he mentors marginalised young people to do the same.
“We all fill our brains up with too much information. Medicine can be an all-consuming career. It’s my release, if I get too stressed I paint and it’s a huge relief for me,” Dr Hemsley said.
“Living up north can be very raw, it’s a harsh environment and there are real extremes. I was working on the edge of my skills looking after some seriously sick people with the retrieval services 1,200 kilometres away.”
Dr Hemsley said painting was his way of dealing with the stress of life and death situations when he was based in the remote town of Kununurra.
“I had this quite sick child with meningitis and the Royal Flying Doctor Service couldn’t come until midday the next day at the earliest,” he said.
“It was about 1:00am, so I was worried about his treatment and got home and couldn’t sleep. So I got out a big piece of paper and started painting outside.”
Dr Hemsley said the rationality of medicine and the creativity of painting are worlds apart.
“For me it’s like chalk and cheese, but we all need that in whatever we do. We need an escape, that’s what’s important,” he said.
“It’s been crucial to my wellbeing, it’s meditative. I think everyone needs something meditative, it doesn’t have to be painting but a way to meet people other than your work.”
Dr Hemsley has now retired from full time medicine but spends four months of the year in the East Kimberley.
“I stay in touch in the Aboriginal artists I became close with. It took me quite a long time to be on the on ground with the traditional healers and artists before they felt comfortable letting me use their ochres and showing me their bush medicines, so I feel quite privileged,” he said.
“When you are working with ochres, it’s very physical. You need to go out and find the ochres and then grind it up.
“It’s very meditative, if you’ve had a bad day at work there is nothing like crushing up some ochre rocks.”
Far from taking a paracetamol, Dr Hemsley has his own treatment for a headache.
“I learnt to play the didgeridoo too and had lessons every week. If you have bit of headache, playing the didge it just shakes it out of you, works every time,” he said.
In the last few months, Dr Hemsley has taken on mentoring a young protégé, a Collie man with an intellectual handicap who is a gifted painter.
Dr Hemsley also runs free art workshops for marginalised people or persons with a disability, through the organisation ‘Art Partners‘ based in Bunbury.
“The art of people who have a disability or a mental illness can be very moving, it’s the least I can do,” he said.
“There is nothing magic about it, the more you paint the better you get.”