SCOTS All Saints College graduate Bella Siegert has come through a most challenging year with two very important things to show for it.
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The first is a clean bill of health after her treatment for the bone cancer osteosarcoma.
The second is a spot in the ArtExpress series of exhibitions for outstanding Higher School Certificate artworks.
Bella's major work, Oncology Landscape, which she developed and created in response to her treatment, will go on show next year at the Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery and Arts Centre in southern Sydney and at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery.
"I was working on it all year while I was in hospital and at school," she said of her major work.
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Oncology Landscape - which consists of three works, incorporating tapestry, embroidery, hand-stitching and dyeing techniques - is "basically about my treatment and what I went through and getting better and getting back to normal".
In part of the work, colours are used to represent rejuvenation.
"There's lots of browns and tans and yellows and stuff, but then it's got colours through it to represent recovery and the good stuff," she said.
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Bella's treatment included nine months of chemotherapy and, in the middle of that period, surgery on her leg in Sydney.
She had started working on her HSC artwork last year, but beginning treatment for osteosarcoma and everything that involved changed the work's direction.
"It would have been different. It wouldn't have been about what it's about."
Her teacher Fiona Hayward, she said, played a big part in the major work coming together.
"I went into school and basically we developed the whole thing together.
"She helped me a lot with trying to get what I wanted into an artwork."
Art has always been an interest, she said.
"I really like textiles and I like being creative.
"I'm really into sport, so it [art] is a very different thing."
Bella will take a working gap year in Bathurst next year and then plans to go to university the following year.
"I'm looking at exercise science or physiotherapy," she said. "They're the two things that I'll probably go into."
There will also be ArtExpress openings for her to attend.
