Dear SarBear

With the arrival of 2015, I was faced with the greatest trauma in my life when my best friend and cousin Sarah, suddenly passed away in her sleep at the age of 28. Since then, A Drawing A Day often finds itself creating illustrations in memory and in hope to reach the vibrant, larger than life being that was and now is physically missing.

Dear SarBear is a curation of illustrations that explore grief and life after Sarah, through a collaboration of colour with her 4 and 6-year-old niece and nephew Liam and Ava. A collection of colourful dreaming’s, using signs and symbols that both I as a 28-year-old, and Liam and Ava as small children, conjure up in our dreams of her. We explore our journey through grief and the ways in which our creative intelligence can communicate this to ourselves, the outside world and even further to the outside universe of SarBear’s existent now, to the stars and sparkles, the morning sun on a window, natures magic little inklings of how she continues to touch our lives today.

Dear SarBear features an array of some of her favourite things such as flamingos, sugar skulls, buttons and her pet flamingo Gracie, who lives in the sky with her (as dreamt by Ava aged 4). Dear SarBear talks to the audience about grief and the universal hurts we all face when losing someone dear. This collaboration is guided by the thoughts and directions of Liam and Ava, and finally composed and completed by myself, Meg Minkley. The show will be a very large collection of works on paper, canvas and ply using acrylic paints, copic markers and posca pens. 107 Projects will be adorned with the experience of sculptural rainbows, flamingos, sugar skulls and Astroturf between the toes.

Together we are able to enter a world of dreaming, and the meaning of real energy and spirit when a person is gone from our physical realms to how we interact with them in a new colourfully imaginative form. When you lose your person, rewiring your life without them again is impossible. I see my art and my colour as a way of continuing my relationship with SarBear in a spiritual sense and enabling her existence to live on – an existence that continues to explode the hearts of many with all the sparkles.

Opening Wednesday 14th September | 6–8pm.

Exhibition continues until Sunday 25th September.

Gallery open Tuesday–Saturday 11am–6pm | Sunday 11am–4pm