'When The Going Gets Tough': Mixing colours and resilience to cope with COVID-19 restrictions

The Newcastle artist often paints landscapes with few or no people in them. When figures appear, they often seem distanced from each other, occupying their own space.

"Life is now like the art," observes Coles.

Never mind artists being solitary beings working in a studio. Kerrie Coles describes herself as a "social butterfly". But with the restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Coles says, "my wings are clipped; I can't do all the things I used to do."

Kerrie Coles paints where she lives, in an apartment in Islington, with her husband, Emeritus Professor John Rostas. That location means she creates and lives close to the city's centre, making it easy to head out and enjoy life at places along the harbour and the beaches. But of late, the 71-year-old and her husband, who turned 70 in February, have been ordered by loved ones to stay in.

Coles' sons-in-law have devised at-home exercise programs so the couple don't have to go to the gym, and her daughter has told her she is "off all grandparent duty" and has been dropping groceries at the doorstep.

"It's almost like a role reversal," Kerrie Coles says.

If Kerrie Coles feels a little more isolated than usual right now, it is made easier by the journey she has taken in the past.

She is a breast cancer survivor.

Coles was first diagnosed in 1999. The cancer was detected while she was still undergoing rehabilitation after a serious car accident.

"The difficulty was trying to cope with, 'How do I deal with this new thing that's just hit me?'," she recalls.

Kerrie Coles had trained as an artist before launching into a career as a teacher. But the crash and then the cancer had brought that to a halt.

So to pick herself up, Coles picked up her paint brushes once more. While being treated for her cancer, Coles prepared work for her first solo exhibition at the renowned von Bertouch Galleries in Cooks Hill.

"So I didn't have time then to feel sick and think about myself," she says. "I had to then channel my energy into my painting. The exhibition, I think, opened in the third round of my chemo, when I had my hair up in a turban.

"I remember at that exhibition feeling really triumphant, that I'd made it, and the art had been my salvation.

"It gave me a way to express how I was thinking and feeling without having to verbalise anything."

In 2006, Coles was diagnosed with breast cancer again.

"It did really floor me," she says.

"But I thought, 'Okay, I survived it before', and I knew what to expect. The fear of not knowing wasn't there, because I knew exactly was going to happen.

"Doing it the second time, I thought, 'Maybe I'm not going to make it this time', I think that was my fear the second time. But again, I just kept working."

Kerrie Coles conquered her fears, and, through treatment, she beat the disease.

From her experience then, Coles is applying lessons to now, as she - as all of us - confront the fear of the unknown.

"I got that sense of control [during the cancer treatment] because I put my trust in the people looking after me," she explains. "I'd focus on the fact that, 'People are looking after me to help me heal'.

"In this instance here with what's happening, we have to focus on the people looking after us, who are in control, who are going to make it safe for us."

Coles concedes her trust turned "on and off", before she burst into laughter.

"But I think, 'Yes, you have to have faith'," she adds. "You have to think, 'Okay, people are trying to do the right thing by you'."

As we're all doing, Kerrie Coles is filling her days, occupying the hours, cleaning, baking, and painting.

She is preparing for an exhibition in November. With the paintings she had already begun, Coles was exploring the impact of the bushfires on our lives. Then coronavirus turned up, compelling Coles to spend more time in her home studio than she otherwise might.

"I might end up doing some still life," she says. "Also views from my apartment, views of what I can see."

At this stage, she doesn't know how she will depict this time of isolation and resilience in those works, nor does the exhibition have a name yet.

But this much Kerrie Coles does know: "It won't be called 'COVID-19', I can tell you that!"

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