LONG READ: The power of nature and believing in young people are our only hope for Nairn-based 88-year-old textile artist
Our homes can often tell us much about our own personality. As soon as I step into the Nairn home of Susie Rose Alexander, a former ballerina turned textile artist, I can see this is the home of a creative spirit, the space for an artist, punctuated by crafts and colourful drapes.
What catches my attention are the many pictures around me. They are on the walls, resting on the window sills, protected in a frame: this house exudes memories and stories.
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Around her studio, contouring two comfortable armchairs, are several artworks inspired by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Among them is Susie’s latest work, “New Life Rises From The Ashes of Hiroshima”, a tribute to the power of nature to regenerate life and restore hope, even after the most brutal devastation.
She was only 10 years old when the bomb was dropped, in August 1945.
“It has haunted me all my life,” she said. “I couldn’t understand how it could have happened. This question has stayed with me all my life.”
A lifetime through art
At the age of 88, Susie has lived quite a life, one where she had to reinvent herself multiple times.
Born in Edinburgh in 1935, she was spotted as a natural talent and was brought into the world of ballet. The youngest of four siblings, she went on to train at a prestigious school in England, later becoming a main performer in the Royal Ballet in the late 50s, starring in productions Giselle and touring around the world. Later in her career, she became a choreographer and ballet teacher.
However, that chapter of her life was to be halted abruptly. Susie had a major collapse in her 50s, when she was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), making her unable to go back to her previous life. But a new one was starting.
Being housebound for 18 months led her to pick up knitting again, and then a good friend introduced her to hand-spun wool, and procured her a spinning wheel shortly after.
“Even as a child, I've always loved working with my hands - knitting, sewing, creating. During my illness, it gave me a spiritual lifeline.
“I felt this was a metaphor for my life. You take a few very frail bits of something from a worm this you know or a sheep. It's filthy and horrid, but you clean it and card it, and you end up with some little threads. I thought, “I've only got a few tiny threads of my life.’”
However, this was not enough for Susie, who was in need of a fresh start.
The beginning of a new journey
“I had to find a different way to live,” she said. “I couldn’t earn my living anymore, and I couldn’t go back to where I was before, because I knew I had no old self to go back to.
“I had to move on and change the way I was living.”
After trying unsuccessfully to move back to Scotland, where her mother lived, the least expected opportunity stemmed from a recent journey her daughter went on.
Invited by an Indian gentleman who ran a creativity centre for deprived children, in 1988 she left her home on the Isle of Wight to travel to India.
“I was hugely inspired by the creativity of people there,” she recalled of the month-long journey immersed in a whirlwind of colours and various forms of art.
Once she returned to the UK, she packed two suitcases and her spinning wheel and she moved to East London, leaving her marriage behind her. Here she joined a voluntary organisation in a destitute area of the city.
Here, she worked with children from the Bangladeshi Muslim community living in the area, as well as pupils from a Catholic school, doing a variety of creative activities. That’s when she felt an enlightenment, an idea to try to bring people together.
The Rainbow Tree of Friendship
“They never talked to each other, although they lived in the same community,” she recalled.
“I realised they would be brought up to feel hostility, if not hate, towards the other children because of their race and religion. So I thought, what if I could have a handful of these children and give them something to make together?”
That’s where the Rainbow Tree of Friendship initiative was born. The project bloomed beyond London: Susie reached out to India, the Isle of Wight and Iona in Scotland, proposing that a group of children make a branch of a tree, which would then be sawn together.
Over the years, the project took her on many journeys around the world, from India to Poland, Russia and Germany, and then back to Scotland. Most importantly, it created a connection between children across the world, with many trees and seeds created over the years.
“It was always going back to what I felt after Hiroshima, and how humans were - and still are - able to commit those atrocities against one another,” she said.
“I felt as if through the Rainbow tree, I could bring them together, form a bond, and that’s so important, because when you meet, then you truly realise that they are human beings, just like you.”
The pictures in her house and in the folders are a testament to the many friendships that were born out of the initiative.
“I met so many amazing people,” she said, holding back the emotion as she shared her story.
A new life back home
In 1998, she finally was able to return to Scotland, moving into a farm cottage in Moray. Shortly after, to mark the millenium celebrations and the final year of the Rainbow Tree project, she organised a special exhibition, which was on display at Elgin Library.
Since then she has continued her work as a textile artist, creating artwork to be displayed in churches and other places, and eventually she moved to Nairn sixteen years ago.
Now, she continues to advocate for that human connection, and the hope in young people and nature at a very bleak moment in our history.
Her work inspired by Hiroshima has recently been displayed at Gordonstoun and is set to be on show at the Nairn Book And Art Festival this year, as well as at the Scottish Parliament and Iona Abbey.
“Nature is our hope, and young people are learning about that and focusing on it.
“It not only gives us hope, but it shows us that now we need to nourish the home of all humanity. We are all connected.”
