Girl, You Will Survive the Fire
Some ideas arrive fully formed. Others sit quietly for months before coalescing.
Girl, You Will Survive the Fire was one of those.
When I created this original mixed media work (a botanical gelli print with textile and collage) I remember hesitating over the words more than the image. The stylized pincushion proteas, and even the font, felt instinctive — but the wording felt exposed. I worried about the use of girl. How would be received? Would I find myself having to explain or justify it? How many people even know that protea plants reseed after veld fires? So much angst.
And then people started responding to it — immediately, without explanation. A mother buying a card for her daughter writing matric. A woman ordering several, saying very little. Another asking if she could take a photo of it because, in her words, everyone needs to hear this.
No pushback. Only recognition.
It probably shouldn’t have surprised me. Proteas seem to carry meaning — to hold weight physically and emotionally. I love their strange, architectural confidence. They are plants that don’t apologise for being shaped by their environment.
The Overberg has been burning again. Ash in the air, smoke in the distance and that dull ache in the chest that comes from watching something familiar threatened. And then, yesterday, rain. Proper rain. The kind that slows everything down and reminds you that nothing stays fixed for long — not the worst moments, and not the good ones either.
Soon it will be clear that what looks like devastation is, in fact, the beginning of something else. Living in the Cape, you grow up knowing this intellectually. But every fire season, it lands differently.
Right now, it feels like the whole world is on fire. It’s got me thinking again about this work. About why it landed the way it did.
I don’t think people are responding to optimism. I think they’re responding to honesty.
The fatigue we carry often isn’t dramatic, and it’s not always visible. It can be the accumulation of things. Responsibilities layered quietly over time. The sense that you’re expected to keep going, keep coping, keep producing, even when you’re running low.
For me, art has always been where I go to regenerate. Not in a grand, disciplined way. More often through small, unremarkable rituals: working on a piece without a deadline, sitting with materials and letting my hands lead, remembering something — a place, a colour, a story — and following it rather than trying to improve it.
Proteas are so central to these memories. I recall my mom telling me about the day before my parents’ wedding, when the florist let them down completely. There would be no flowers. But, on the day, she walked into St Mary’s Cathedral in Cape Town to find the church filled with orange pincushion proteas. A friend who managed the municipal nursery had come to the rescue. Unfortunately, there’s no photos because there was also a mishap with some of the photographer’s film.
It rained that day too. In mid-December! Yet, my parents went on to celebrate fifty years of marriage.
So much of life isn’t documented, but still shapes us. Moments become touchstones not because they were perfect, but because they arrived when we needed them. Survive the Fire was what I needed at that moment, but more often, my proteas are less a statement, more a quiet acknowledgement. A reminder that burning doesn’t mean ending. That renewal doesn’t always announce itself loudly. That strength can be tender.
I don’t think art needs to shout. I think it needs to sit with you. To say something you already know, but maybe haven’t heard reflected back in a while.
The original Girl, You Will Survive the Fire lives in Brisbane, Australia with a very dear friend of mine, but you can find prints here. Or, explore proteas in other works and products.
