When he agreed to keep a friend company on a short art course, ex-serviceman and teacher James Farquharson could not have predicted the positive impact it would have on his life.
James had developed PTSD after returning from deployment to East Timor in the early 2000s.
“One of my teaching mates dragged me along to an adult education short course in acrylics for beginners, mainly because he didn’t want to go on his own,” James says.
Once he stumbled on his artistic side, James didn’t look back. After finishing the eight-week short course with his colleague, he enrolled at an art college. Unfortunately James soon realised that he wasn’t learning the basics he needed to carry out the artistic ideas he was having.
“I decided to do the (Chisholm) TAFE course because I thought it would give me a better grounding in the basic skills, which is exactly what I found.”
James started the Diploma of Visual Arts (Fine Arts) in 2019, studying part-time and hoping to delve further into the arts and hone his new-found skills. His subject matter is comprised of his time in East Timor and the affect it’s had since returning home.
“The thing that grabbed me the most last year was sculpture. I also really enjoyed print making, which I’d never done before. I seem to have the ability to produce images that suit that medium.”
“There’s a therapeutic side too, to say, cutting a lino cut – a repeated action that I think is true of applying paint or pastel or pencil. It certainly gives me a kind of peace…it’s become a way of expressing things that I had no other way of expressing.”
While his pieces are very personal, they’ve reached a much wider audience. His works were selected for a travelling art exhibition for the Shrine of Remembrance and he placed in the top ten of the Napier Waller Art Prize in 2019.
James’ story is sure to continue inspiring not only veterans, but people who might be seeking a new pathway in life as a new sense of purpose or healing through study.
