Real Life: Artist Freya Perry on her life on colour and art
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - My name's Freya Perry.
00:06 I had a very bad head injury accident about nine years ago.
00:11 A very heavy ceramic pot fell on my head
00:13 and I was unconscious for two and a half hours.
00:16 And it was a friend who took me to the local QA hospital.
00:19 And they gave me a lot of time
00:22 trying to find out what had happened.
00:23 There was no brain bleed, I'm grateful for that.
00:27 But they said being unconscious for two and a half hours,
00:30 they were absolutely amazed that I was still alive.
00:33 My response was, "Well, it wasn't my time to go."
00:37 And I still believe that.
00:38 I believe I'm here right now and doing my art and my color
00:42 because there's such very difficult things going on
00:44 on this planet right now.
00:46 This is the right time to get the art out there
00:48 and to keep people lighthearted.
00:50 (upbeat music)
00:55 (upbeat music)
00:57 Color's a great inspiration to me.
01:02 My mom always said, "You were born with a rainbow inside you."
01:05 Yeah, what else could I do but work with a rainbow then?
01:08 And I've always loved color and used it
01:10 any way, shape or form.
01:12 So as a child, I always did knitting, I did sewing.
01:16 I used to make so many things.
01:18 I was always told as a child by teachers
01:21 that you weren't very good.
01:22 And so I gave it up for a while
01:24 until the right teacher came along
01:26 and fed me the right information for me
01:30 to do a fantasy piece.
01:31 And I guess that's where my art has moved on from since then.
01:35 I love all sorts of art.
01:38 It may be figurative, it may be totally abstract,
01:41 it may be fantasy.
01:42 It's whatever touches my heart at the time.
01:44 I guess my art has evolved quite a lot
01:47 over the passage of time.
01:49 And that's by things that happen to us in life.
01:51 And I had an accident many, many years ago,
01:56 impacted on my head and my brain, my neck,
02:00 and put me out of life for a long, long time.
02:02 But the thing that kept drawing me back
02:04 to get me to fight coming out of that
02:06 was my love of color.
02:07 And I wanted to get back into art in some way
02:10 to help me to heal myself for my own well-being.
02:14 And that's what took me on a journey,
02:16 but in a new journey into art.
02:18 And it's whatever arises on a particular day.
02:22 I will wake up and think, here I am today in green.
02:26 Why am I wearing green today?
02:27 Do I want to paint in green?
02:29 And I often find that I'm wearing the color
02:31 that I start painting.
02:32 - Excellent.
02:34 So in regards to that process,
02:37 I mean, would you say that incident changed
02:40 the way you approached art as well, or?
02:43 - The incident changed my life totally.
02:45 It was one second and my life was gone.
02:47 I mean, I couldn't read.
02:49 I couldn't watch television.
02:50 I couldn't use a computer.
02:52 I could barely walk down the road.
02:54 I found it very difficult to engage in conversations.
02:56 And I had so much sensory overload,
02:59 it was almost impossible to live.
03:01 And I went very much within.
03:02 And do you know what?
03:03 If I look at it, that was kind of a blessing in disguise,
03:07 because what that did is it made me very, very quiet,
03:10 very silent.
03:12 And it's only in that silence that you get to think,
03:14 well, who am I now?
03:15 Where am I going?
03:17 And it was this very busy life I'd led before
03:20 that took me into the silence then,
03:23 and has brought me on now to go into art
03:26 in a different way.
03:26 And it seems strange, but I'm thankful
03:30 that I went through that accident.
03:31 (upbeat music)
03:34 (upbeat music)
03:37 (upbeat music)
03:39 (upbeat music)
03:42 (upbeat music)
03:44 [Music]