b'PERSONAL STORIESSINGING HER SONGBy Charnel AndersonArtist Leona Skye finds liberation and comfort in her art and in sharing her human trafficking story L eona Skyes mother likes to say her daughter was born with a pencil between her toes. Skye, 51, is an Ojibwe artist from Pic River First Nation. As a child she used to sit across the table from her mom, also an artist, and mimic whatever she was doing. If not at the kitchen table, Skye could be found, crayons in hand, doodling under the coffee table or in the closet, or even in the kitchen cupboard. I liked to draw, says Skye simply. As a kid, I thought that it was one thing I was good at because I was robbed of anything having to do with me being good. Skye is a survivor of human trafficking. She was still a child when she was sexually abused at parties her father would have at their home. As long as his friends brought booze to the party, my father let them do whatever and never stopped them, never protected me, says Skye somberly. Painting has been a way for her to overcome the painful experiences she endured. As she explains, Art has always been the one thing that was normal about me. Skye, whose typical media includes acrylic and ink, says her artwork is based on either her emotions at the time, or a story she distills into her creations. Its an indirect way to share information with other people, she says. Its what Im feeling in the moment. the colours and the energy that Im feeling within. Every painting, to me, has some kind of emotional connection.In 2014, Skye created a painting based on a story she heard from a young girls mother: the girl loved to dance around the house with toilet paper. There would be toilet paper everywhere. She was trying to catch the sun, with toilet paper as a ribbon, explains Skye. Her painting features a red sun with a yellow core, and next to it, the young girl clad in a white-fringed dress, with a long black braid crowned with a feather. The girl is dancing around the sun, one end of a ribbon clasped in each hand.The girl died when she was just three years old. The peach-coloured flowers with green leaves in the painting represent everyone who will miss her, and all the tears that people have cried at her loss, says Skye. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the painting is that it allows the girl to finally capture the sun she had so energetically chased. Skye also does a lot of painting on the pow wow trail, where she is a regular sight. Many of those paintings are themed around a persons energy, using colour to express the energy that Skye herself senses. Each painting is sold with a personal-ized explanation detailing why she chose the colours for the particular piece. 26Spring/Summer 2020'