Category Archives: Write

Kendrea’s original prose, blogging and artwork ◙ follows themes of bushfires, art, covid, family history, motorbikes and stories. Includes images and videos.

Paint what you see – show don’t tell

As a painter, the phrase ‘paint what you see, not what you think you see’ binds and cuffs my wrists until I ask ‘what do I think I see?’ As a writer the phrase ‘show don’t tell’ gags the creative  synapses until binary thought is shattered and realization dawns.

Continue reading “Paint what you see – show don’t tell”

Motorcycle Magazine

Biker Ally was an American women’s motorcycling magazine that is sadly out of print now. As the Australian Correspondent, Kendrea photographed and interviewed Australian motorcycling legends including a 40-year-old hitchhiking plum-pudding, nudist motorcyclists protesting invisibility and the Top End’s Billy and Trish, taking the long-way-round the world.

Click on the images below to read and/or download each story:

Protector of the Pudding by Kendrea Rhodes takes you to the PDF download of the story
Kendrea Rhodes Please Look Twice Biker Ally Magazine
The Finke River by Kendrea Rhodes
South America Long Way Round by Kendrea Rhodes Biker Ally Motorcycle Magazine

Forgotten Australians

‘Abandoned’ – by Kendrea Rhodes

 a snippet from a story about a boy lost in institutional care in the 1920s

Abandoned---Forgotten-Australians-by-Kendrea-Rhodes-WIP

We left him to rest, or so we thought.

In the hospital lobby I realized my son was missing, so we retraced our steps back to my grandfather’s room. The picture was memorable: an 89 year old man chatting to his 5 year old great-grandson.

Noticing me at the door, Charlie quickly whispered in his great-grandson’s ear, ‘You can’t choose your family.’

That message is the reason for this short story and the many more that follow; and the reason that my five year old asked, ‘Why can’t you choose your family?’

Charlie’s mother abandoned her seven children at Young and Jackson Hotel in Melbourne in 1926. All seven children became wards of the State of Victoria and were sent to separate orphanages, institutions and foster homes; living in an unaccountable and unrecorded system of care.

During the early twentieth century, approximately half a million children experienced care in institutions or ‘out of home’. Known as ‘Forgotten Australians’, they lived in an unsupervised system sometimes neglected and exploited for the benefit of their carers. Many children weren’t orphans, but their carers told them that their parents were dead.

 

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Want more?…read the following blog posts:

You Can’t Choose Your Family
Abandoned original artwork
Mentally Difficult
Happy Accidents – painting becomes drawing
Validation is good for you
further research on these interesting websites:

Alliance for Forgotten Australians (AFA) is a national alliance of Forgotten Australians and supporters working in partnership to advocate for, and promote, national policies and services to meet the needs and interests of Forgotten Australians.

Find and Connect provides history about Australian orphanages, children’s homes and other institutions.

About KendreArt

Kendrea Rhodes is a visual artist and writer living in South Australia. Her articles, photography and artwork have appeared in local, state, national and international publications.

STEREO STORIES: a song, a place, a time
The Stringybark Short Stories Award 2019
Click on any image to read the story and visit the publication

Kendrea has exhibited her original art since 1999 and is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Creative Arts Honours (Creative Writing) at Flinders University, South Australia. Hybrid methodologies, such as fictocriticism and autotheory, drive her thesis through the quagmires of family history research and literary criticism, resulting in creative work spanning disparate genres and narrative modes.

Click here to read a little of that family history.

Self Portrait: Eye am I.

Identity Dilemma. Eye am I. Self Portrait, Kendrea Rhodes original mixed media art. KendreArt.com
Identity dilemma: am I what I see, what I think, what I do, what I think I see, think, do? Am I what you see, what you? Which eye?
Observation changes everything.

KendreArt Logo

KendreArt logo. Oil on canvas, exhibited 'Out of the Blue' Exhibition, Lobethal Mill, 2007. Original art by Kendrea Rhodes. Portrait of Nicole Kidman.
KendreArt logo. Oil on canvas, exhibited ‘Out of the Blue’ Exhibition, Lobethal Mill, 2007. Original art by Kendrea Rhodes. Portrait of Nicole Kidman.

Stories are how we remember

Stories everywhere, interest subjective.

Listen.

Something astounding

in someone else’s voice.

KendreArt

Stories are flexible. They are told, expressed, seen, heard, drawn, read, dreamed, painted, imagined, experienced, embellished, retold, remembered, misremembered and consumed.

The cooperative living in Australian society is an agreement to community stories/collective memories and as a result, there’s more trust and acceptance in my entitled world than I thought (I trust public transport, food safety, paint to dry, other drivers on the road, oh and that help is just a phone call away).

Stories are retold, celebrated, used, and apparently learned from history, all while following the rules of the system we live in. But bending rules, changing what’s seen, and sharing different stories from new voices is as human as submission and suppression. I choose to bend, share and learn.

Having a choice is a privilege.

Kendrea Rhodes is available for commissions and articles, please visit the contact page or connect via social media below ▼

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