Are you ready yet?

Aboriginal Elder, Rex Weatherall and Liz Darmody together with Liz's portrait of Rex

Elizabeth (Liz) Darmody is one incredible lady.

Her story is that of resilience and personal tragedy. Though, throughout her struggles of mental illness, her talent as an artist was uncovered. (Liz drew and painted as a little girl, before her mental illness diagnosis)

Liz’s recollection of her life found us with the help of the Orange O’Brien Centre.

“Art has helped me to leave a world I wasn’t able to deal with and enter a world that I could be extremely proud of,” explained Liz. “It’s brought me such satisfaction and some accolades that no-one can take away from me, I would like other mental health consumers to be able to feel that way too.”

Liz was one of 12 children in her family. At just eight years old, Liz witnessed her Father’s fatal heart attack, which then led to her developing schizophrenia. “I didn’t understand what was going on, but I remember clear as a bell, a male’s voice, I would scream and run, I’d tell him to be quiet and to leave me alone.”

“Back in those days Mum would say, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this or they’ll lock you up’, there wasn’t the same understanding about mental illness – it was you just shouldn’t act, ‘crazy.’”

“I suffered with schizophrenia for as long as I can remember and over the years, I just beat it down somehow,” said Liz. “When something like that is happening to you, it’s real, and it’s hard to understand why other people weren’t concerned and basically telling me to, ‘be quiet.’”

After also enduring a childhood filled with domestic violence, Liz moved to stay with one of her sisters in Blayney.

Liz added, “Domestic violence in those days was a bit like mental health – you just kept quiet about it. The trauma that I dealt with you don’t get over, you just learn to live with it.”

“People would find it hard to believe my story and that’s why I haven’t told it a lot. For a long time, I was on my own raising my children until it became too much.

When my kids were teenagers, I came into Orange one day and I think I went to Cadia House for help. I pulled up outside and I was walking back and forth, back and forth – for nearly two hours. I just couldn’t go in. Eventually one of the ladies who worked there came out and said to me, “Are you ready yet?” and for me to put my hand up for help was a big thing.

Cadia House was absolutely a turning point for me.”

It was then that Liz discovered that art wasn’t just ‘art’ to her. “I was thinking a few years back, I was painting a lot, and I thought to myself, ‘this has saved me’.

Art has always been something I have done as far back as I can remember, I really can’t remember a day when it wasn’t in my life.

Especially after Dad died, I had a favourite hill, I would climb it and stare into space for hours. I’d look out at the mountains and work out how to draw them. But it was expensive to buy art supplies – even at Discount Dave’s - so I used to make my own paints out of mud.”

Liz approached Jen Coleman of the O’Brien Centre just before the COVID shutdown. “It was my desire to teach anybody anything I could, so it became a saviour for them too, and normalises mental illness, removing that stigma. It’s time to make mental illness ‘normal’.”

Now that the O’Brien centre is open again, so is Liz’s art class.

“The staff here have treated me really wonderfully and have made me feel very important. I’m not there to make myself important but I want to help participants, lift them up, and stop them feeling like they have to walk around with their heads down. The more I’ve learnt about it the more I respect myself for coming out the other end of what I have gone through.”

Liz added, “In the future, I’d like to challenge mental health labels. If someone goes to hospital with a broken leg, people don’t say, ‘Hey, that person has a broken leg” for the rest of their life.

I have a saying “I’ve had the privilege to teach the unteachable and reach the unreachable and I’ve done it through art.

“I also work with anyone who is interested in learning about art through my studio in Carcoar.  Art is what I am about, and I’d love anyone who wants to, to contact me.”

If you’re interested in joining Liz in her classes or having a chat, you can contact her through the Orange O’Brien Centre 0423 277 788.