Ann Garry Quish

Artists have worked within the themes of grief throughout history and likewise, contemporary artists across differing cultures hold a significant role in communicating universal human experiences. Feelings of profound loss can grip the heart of the bereaved, spanning from feelings of devastation to more resilient responses of understanding and adaptability.

The experience of loss has the potential to promote a disintegration of the psyche which may warp familiar feelings of safety and security about the world in which we live. Others may find that grief invites expressive freedoms and new ways of experiencing their changed relationship with the deceased. Whatever the focus of the bereaved, their grief stories can illuminate personal creative abilities that can spark a regeneration of meaning about their own lives.

Neither grief nor creativity are linear experiences for the bereaved. Grief is multilayered and can range in expression from natural emotional discomfort to something more debilitating.

Ann Garry Quish's first exhibition at The Courthouse Gallery Red Couch Space, "Tears Water Our Growth" is a personal journey. The work has not only been an active engagement with visual art, and the artists' relationship with materials, subject matter and the processes of the creative action, but it has also been an important resource for reconnecting to her emotional self. Within the work, there is a constant process of searching and exploration of the link between grief, sadness and beauty. ‘Painting has allowed me to do just that, I am forever searching and experimenting with different media to enable me to tell my initial story, to explain without words an emotion.’

Although the inspiration comes from a dark and lonely place this exhibition is the mirror opposite. It is designed to be a symbol of hope and beauty. ‘I would be grateful if it is seen as “a celebration of life”.'

October 27 – January 6, 2024