Above: Sarah Haegens, Phoenix Rising, 2023. Coloured Pencils, 50 x 70cm. $4000. Courtesy: the artist.
The figure in Queensland-based British artist Sarah Haegens’ work Phoenix Rising is balanced on the precipice of change, a moment away from transformation. The strands of her hair, painstakingly rendered by the artist in pencil and pastel, are almost interchangeable with the flames that have begun to engulf her.
The phoenix – a mythical bird from the annals of classical Greece – cyclically grows and dies, reborn again from the ashes of its former life. Here we see a woman in the midst of such a transformation, undisturbed by the fire. She appears to breathe it in, her face relaxed and tilted upward, dismissing the heat of the flames.
The figures in Haegens’ works are not intended to represent a particular person, but rather an experience or emotion with which every viewer will be familiar. As an audience, we feel empathy for her experience, as almost universally humans can understand the notion of being fundamentally changed by hardship. We can only hope to embrace it with the equanimity of Haegens’ Phoenix Rising, and find ourselves the better for it.