PREVIEW

**NOTE TO EDITORS: THIS IS A SENSITIVE STORY WHICH INVOLVED LOTS OF CAREFUL WORK WITH ELAINE. SHE HAS REQUESTED IF PUBLISHED, PLEASE DO NOT ALTER COPY.**

WORDS BYLINE: Sarah Ingram

Elaine Murray and her mum Carol were close. They lived a long way away from each other, with Elaine in Devon and Carol in Hertfordshire, but they spoke every day on the phone and Carol told Elaine she loved her every time she hung up.  

So when Carol died of a heart attack at home in 2021, Elaine was devastated at the unexpected loss of her 74-year-old mum.  
 
Following her funeral, Elaine kept her mum in the wardrobe, in the receptacle her ashes were provided in by the crematorium.  
 
‘There was part of me that really wanted to scatter her, and part of me that didn’t want to let her go,’ Elaine, an artist from Devon, explains.

But when she had an unusual request on Instagram, her life changed.  
 
‘This woman said she loved my work and that she had her mother's ashes and wanted me to do a really joyful painting which incorporated them.  
 
‘I was really curious to hear this and I wanted to see if I could make it work. I'm quite a scientific person. I've got a real appetite for learning and science, but it also sounded like something I’d like to do to remember my mum’, she says.  
 
Elaine worked with a forensic laboratory so she could properly understand what she was dealing with, and discovered that human and animal cremated remains have a very high pH level similar to bleach and therefore have to be treated with great care - on top of the usual reverence anyone needs to apply when handling ashes.  
 
‘I wanted to learn how to handle them respectfully and safely, but also in a way that would ensure the quality of my art. I was worried how the high PH levels would affect paint colour over time, I couldn’t stand it if down the line it changed colour. So the laboratory helped me develop a special stabilising agent that would neutralise the PH and allow the ashes to be added to acrylic paint so I could include them in my work.’ 
 
Elaine produced the work for her client, who was very pleased with the result, and incorporated her mother into her own work; a relief effect heart painted in green.  
 
‘Mum really loved to paint just for joy. In the house growing up, there were many of her pieces. And I thought she would love being part of a picture that's enjoyed in my home with my daughter Isabella’, Elaine, from Lyme Regis, says.  
 
‘Plus, Mum was a very practical lady and she would have been very cross if I spent lots of money on some fancy urn. And I wanted her to be safe, which is why she had been in my wardrobe, but I didn’t want to remember her in a box. I wanted to remember her in nature or in spirit or in joy. She was always laughing, and that's how I wanted to remember her. In colour, because she was a colourful woman.’  
 
Carol’s painting now sits mounted and framed in the kitchen, in the heart of the home, bringing Elaine and Isabella comfort every day.  
 
After posting the works online, people started to contact Elaine and ask for similar commemorative pieces, so she set up Ash2Art, a business that enables people to send their loved ones’ remains in the post to be painted onto a canvas. She also produces commemorative images of loved pets, including Bynx the adored Jack Russel and Mindy, a cat whose new family fell in love with her after she was abandoned when her owners moved away.
 
‘It’s so rewarding and interesting and you feel a deep connection with your client,’ she explains. 
 
‘Ashes actually come in lots of different textures and consistency where they're handled. So I’ve learned how to work them into acrylic and make them into a work that they feel represents their loved person or pet, whether that’s in water, flowers, a heart or another design. I don’t believe that death represents an ending, but the start of the next beautiful part of our journey and I’m grateful to be able to honour that.  
 
‘I always work with one piece at a time. I absolutely wouldn't want there to be a  transference of ashes. There's a reverence involved in the process. I handle them as I would want my mother to be handled.  
 
‘When I receive the ashes, first I feel this sense of gravity, of honour and respect for life. Everything in the known universe is made up from the same 118 elements, meaning that humans are literally made up from star matter.
 
‘And I do really feel that our spirit and our energy goes on to this next wonderful thing. This was part of a living human or animal, and that's the beautiful thing. 
 
‘So my studio is very relaxed but very clean, clinical, because this is forensic material. I’m very conscious to be respectful of them. But as I work, I listen to music, because this life is to be celebrated, and that is how I would like to be remembered - with joy,’ Elaine adds.