'Reflections'

By Dr Clare Rayner

Dr Clare Rayner, Consultant Occupational Physician and Medical Advocate kindly shared a message of hope last month:

“Everyone deserves good healthcare and people with ME deserve the best of that. I will continue to support and advocate for effective, safe management to the best of my ability in my spheres of influence.”

As we prepare to launch an international art project ‘One Red Leaf at a Time’, The Red Leaf Creative Collaborative will be sharing some red leaf interpretations inspired by The Red Tree and ME. Here Clare, a member of The Red Leaf Creative Collaborative, who also has her own lived experience of long term health issues, shares her stunning piece, 'Reflections':

I knew Jo from early on in the COVID-19 pandemic through my advocacy work with and for people who were suffering as a result of this infection. I have been so impressed by how Jo and her family deal with such grace with the difficult situation they find themselves in. I responded to a request from Jo to take part in a creative project and the idea was for each of us to create red leaves in whatever visual creative form we wanted to. I was instantly attracted to say ‘yes’ because it appealed to me to offer a creative response to a very difficult situation. As Dostoevsky wrote, 'beauty will save the world’ and Dorothy Day, ‘The world will be saved by Beauty.’ Intuitively I believe that creative energies and efforts can heal in some way. I also believe in the idea of creative collaborations. I really like the idea that in this project we can use whatever artistic media suits us best. The final reason that I said ‘yes’ to this project is because red is a theme that runs through my own creative work. Red is the colour of life, of blood, and is the colour of spirit.

I paint in two very different forms. Firstly, in oils and secondly in batik. Batik is an art form that originated in Asia. You start with a light-coloured material and apply molten wax on any parts that you want to keep that light colour. The wax then resists any ink or dye or paint that you put on top. Each time you put a colour on, which you want to keep, you wax on top of that. The wax resists any further colour, building up a picture from light to darker. I decided that I would do my first red leaf picture in batik. Starting on very light white silk, I built up the colours and decided that my leaf would be floating on water, reflected into multiple different colours. It has droplets of water all over it. The process of making batik is somewhat unpredictable and therefore part of the process is to use what I call ‘happy accidents’ to make up the whole. This is the first picture that I have done for The Red Tree and ME. I am very happy to be part of The Red Leaf Creative Collaborative and hope that there will be positive effects rippling out from our endeavours.