From families A sister’s story

Family & Friends of Missing PersonsPolice & Justice

Hey drop me a lineMy younger brother went missing in Canada in May 2013.

I learned through a phone call on May 29. I struggled to collect scattered fragments of understanding from police and my brother’s friends in Canada, often in the middle of the night due to the time difference.

As an artist I have a website and decided to make a painting to put on my home page as a message in a bottle in case he visited. We were all frantic for him to make any kind of contact and were looking for whatever ways we could think of to let him know – even if he didn’t want to be found, just to send a word.

This painting is based on a photo I took of my brother the last time I stayed with him. He took me to his favourite places, including this shoreline on Toronto Island where he loved to wade and look out across Lake Ontario. I knew he would recognise himself and his bike. The title was my message.

The foreground is made up of rather uneven colourful lines – usually my hand is far more steady. I can see it shows how my own world had become intense and shaky, and the contrast between life before and after the phone call. I thought until this minute that I was painting his life, but I guess I was also painting mine.

My brother’s edges are defined because I knew where his edges were up until then, but the rest of the canvas is untouched – I didn’t know what came next.

It made me realise that nobody knows when they are taking a photo of a missing person.

There you are!While we waited and anguished, I decided to make a series of paintings including getting ideas from my three children, placing my brother in whatever amazing settings we could imagine him into.

He loved old houses and he loved the woods and countryside. He had made two lamps out of clarinets with lampshades. So I decided to make a painting of him and his bike in inviting hilly countryside with a little old white house, and the hills dotted with trees made of clarinets with lampshades.

As I went along, however, the house morphed into a polar bear, the clarinets didn’t appear, and it began to snow. The polar bear had decided to leave his usual habitat and go exploring new horizons over the wooded hills, but as it began to snow, familiar and blanketing, his heart was pulling him home again.

Little did I know how very accurate this setting was.

Hey drop me a line – acrylic on canvas, completed 29 June 2013

There you are! – acrylic on canvas, completed 15 August 2013

CONTACT DETAILSFor further information about this material or other topics, please call us on: Phone: (02) 8688 5423 or 1800 227 772 • National Relay Service: 1800 555 677 Fax: (02) 8688 9631 • Email: ffmpu@agd.nsw.gov.au

www.missingpersons.lawlink.nsw.gov.au

© State of New South Wales through Families and Friends of Missing Persons Unit, Department of Police and Justice, May 2014. This work may be freely reproduced for personal, educational and government purposes. Permission must be received from the Department for all other uses.

Alternative formats of this information are available.

This document has been prepared by Families and Friends of Missing Persons Unit for general information purposes. (FMP • 05/2014)

In October a deleted suicide note was found on my brother’s computer and we now believe he went off into the woods to disappear “back into nature”. Two police searches have failed to find him.

By the time his note was found the Canadian winter was closing in.

There has been no news. I have not made another painting (at the time of writing).

And then...

Wrap me in a warm hugI hadn’t made a painting for eight months when a friend said that she would love to commission a work by me as a gift to herself for her 60th birthday.

When I make a commissioned piece for someone I get to know them and then put that person onto the canvas in whatever way that may evolve, so in order to make my friend’s work I needed to not only begin painting again, but also to be able to work freely with my heart and soul in it.

The first day was spent simply making the studio tidy and cosy and tempting and welcoming.

The next day when I took up my brushes I decided to make a painting or two for myself to get me going again, to relax, enjoy colours, and simply fiddle to my heart’s content.

The first painting which appeared makes me think of a crocheted blanket my grandmother had when I was small. I was thinking of calling it Wrap me in a warm blanket… but it became Wrap me in a warm hug.

I have now made a larger, crazier version, and as of today there’s a fresh canvas all ready for the commissioned painting and I’m excited to make a start.

I love that it is because of a friend that I have now been drawn back into the studio.

Wrap me in a warm hug – acrylic on canvas, completed 22 April 2014