From Anguish To Art

Warning: the following story discusses domestic violence and suicide.

If you or someone you know needs help, support is available at Lifeline on 13 11 14, Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or 1800Respect on 1800 737 732.

If you are an Australian veteran or family of a veteran, you can also call Open Arms, Veterans & Veterans Families Counselling Service, on 1800 011 046.

Veteran, war widow, mother, advocate and artist are some of the titles Kathryn (Kat) Rae holds. Beyond these labels she exemplifies courage, resilience and determination. Sharing her story as the vehicle to confront challenging topics, her art interweaves private objects and personal memories to create artworks which bring the private world into the public sphere. Predominantly a printmaker, Rae thoughtfully organises and assembles personal objects – including love letters, military paraphernalia, and family photographs – in ways that shine light on sensitive or taboo topics. To view her works is to be invited into vulnerable and personal experiences. Recognising the importance of her artistic talents, the Memorial has acquired three of Rae’s artworks – Cloud Slide, Reckoning, and Coming Home – which share her personal stories of love and loss.  

Rae knew she wanted to be an artist at a young age, yet growing up in a large family under economic pressures, it never seemed a viable option. After completing the Australian Defence Force Cadets program in high school, her mother suggested that Rae consider joining the army.

“I thought personally that they wouldn’t accept me because I was too arty … I thought I’ll apply, and they’ll reject me and I will go off to be an artist.” - Kat Rae

As fate would have it, Rae was offered a scholarship to undertake a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Enlisting in 1999, Rae viewed her army career as involving humanitarian work, but the events of 11 September 2001 changed her course.

“We all sat down and watched the TV and thought, oh wow, our careers have really changed.” - Kat Rae

Months later, Rae was offered a rotation in the Middle East. Volunteering for deployment, she served in Kuwait as part of Operation Catalyst in 2007, and then Afghanistan with Operation Slipper in 2009 and 2012.

“So many famous Australian artists have done their military time … Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker, all these people had done service. And I thought ok, I’ll live a large life as a young artist and always go back to drawing and painting and printmaking later.” - Kat Rae

While serving, Rae met Lieutenant Andrew Christie and the pair formed a close friendship that quickly developed into a relationship. With Andrew on his second deployment to Iraq, the relationship withstood the challenges of long distance and warfare, and the couple went on to marry.

Settling into life in Australia, their daughter Imogen was born, and things appeared perfect. However, Christie was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which manifested in unstable and violent behaviour. This escalated until in 2017 he died from suicide.

Through the shock and pain, Rae attempted to keep herself preoccupied by juggling the demands of solo parenting and a full-time career. A few years later, on the anniversary of her 20 years of service, Rae began thinking about making a fresh start. Discussing alternative career options with a close friend, she was reminded of her first passion: art. Taking a leap of faith, Rae said farewell to the army and moved to Melbourne in 2019. With the support of organisations such as the Australian National Veterans Art Museum she embarked on a new career.

As an Australian Defence Force veteran and artist, Rae entered Cloud Slide into the Memorial’s 2019 Napier Waller Art Prize; her work has been submitted for each iteration of the prize since then. With each submission, Rae’s work demonstrates her artistic development, and has been awarded as both a finalist and highly commended artist.

One of Rae’s earliest works, Cloud Slide (2019) utilises a poem and photograph to speak about the loss of a parent through a child’s eye – more specifically, through Imogen’s experience. It demonstrates the power art holds as a platform to empower those without a voice. Embracing the labour intensive process of hand-set letter printing, Rae methodically processed words of grief to form a poem, transforming emotion into art.

A year later, Rae created Coming Home (2020), a collage of military-issued stencilled shapes and a silhouette of the Australian War Memorial building printed over four different maps. Rae uses her family’s experience of deployment and displacement to narrate and address the realities of re-mapping one’s life. Leaving the fourth print ambiguous, she invites the viewer to question the notion of place, and reflect on the experience of disconnection from one’s environment.

More recently, the Memorial acquired Reckoning (2021), a series of photographic etchings that responds to the Brereton Report from the perspective of a veteran, inviting viewers to consider the fallibility of knowledge and glorification of war. Through a repetitious process of printing and etching, Rae merges images of the redacted Brereton Report, the Australian War Memorial building, and women in burkas. These images obscure, entwine, and burn into one another other to form a new image. Truth and reality become difficult to discern because of institutional unaccountability, but Rae puts the victims and survivors of alleged war crimes by Australian soldiers at the forefront.

“Despite the sickening gravity of what has happened, my artwork shows that there is beauty found when we have the courage to reckon with the unvarnished truth.” - Kat Rae on Reckoning, 2022.

While Rae’s artistic practice began as a form of processing trauma and grief, it continues to grow and evolve over time to focus on issues of place, memory, and experience.

Through her art and advocacy work through the families of veterans support organisation Legacy, Rae continues to work for those without a voice. Demonstrating that through adversity there is hope, Kat’s work offers a ‘rae’ of sunshine through the clouds. 

The Napier Waller Art Prize is open to all current and former service personnel in the Australian Defence Force. The prize encourages artistic excellence, promotes the transformative power of creativity, and raises awareness of the experiences and talent of service personnel.

Now in its fifth iteration, the prize continues play an important role in providing ADF service personnel and veterans a platform to explore creative opportunities within a supportive space.

To find out more information about the 2024 Napier Waller Art Prize https://www.awm.gov.au/napier-waller-art-prize-hub