Vanessa Smith is an artist who has worked with Buzzy’s Bees creating art for the Give Grief a Voice project since 2021. She shares with us her process for creating priceless art for bereaved families, her own story with grief, and how this project has impacted her life.

I experienced my own loss in 2015, which is what inspired me to jumpstart my career in design and art. In my professional career, I’m a graphic designer – which is digital – and an illustrator, and I’ve found myself doing more digital illustrations for the illustration work I do as well. Painting to me is always such a personal thing. It’s such a release of my own emotions. I do paintings sometimes here and there, more for myself, but I really look forward to working with families participating in Give Grief a Voice, because that is my dedicated time to have that release. It really has changed my art practice. I think about and study different techniques throughout the year, but I wait for the family interviews and stories to come through to actually put brush to canvas.

When I receive the stories, it brings back a lot of feelings and emotions that I went through when I experienced my loss. I read the stories through once just to get a feel of the child and the family, and then I put myself in the place of where I was, where I had come from, that feeling of vulnerability, that feeling of strength. I make sure that I’m in the right headspace. I make sure that my physical environment and everything is in tune with preparing me to set myself in a different space to read through and try to understand what these families are going through.

After I read through the story, I make note of key things I see, whether it is a particular flower, or a tree, or some sort of particular setting or animal, if it’s a book or a song. I have purchased the books and read them. I’ve added the songs to my Spotify playlist and I give them grace. I really try to feel the emotional connection with the family and understand their grief and how it’s affecting them. 

It’s a very tricky thing to go through because there is a fine line of honoring the grief that this family is feeling. You have to play with a lot of ideas and emotions and references to be sure that you’re soft with your approach, but pretty straightforward with the intent of it all. It’s a different process that I’ve done with any other of my art works of commissions.

I have grown a lot as an artist and as a person working with this project. I have healed. I have helped other people heal. I feel like I’m a part of something that’s so much bigger than myself, that love emanates through the artwork and knowing that every time these families look at it, they can feel the emotion that went into it, and it feels alive. At least that’s my hope. The fact that this program is in place to help abolish that taboo sense around grief just brings it all into a very rewarding place for each of us artists, for the families, for the organization, and for the community.

Amanda says the children from this project are part of her family now, and I feel the same way. I have my story, I have symbolism that I would include in my story, and a song. Creating art for Give Grief a Voice has been the most wonderful, rewarding, and inspirational art program that I’ve been involved with in my career. It’s just wonderful.