Together, we honour the spectrum of love and loss through an illuminating art practice.

This immersive morning invites you to bring your head, heart and hands into gentle conversation. We collectively tend to the impermanence of loss with care and curiosity.

Blue will be our companion
Across cultures and canvases, blue has long spanned sorrow and serenity, the intimate and the infinite. Together, we’ll explore where we see and feel its many emotive hues.

Cyanotype is a sunlit spell.
Developed in the 1800s, this yesteryear photographic printing process uses iron salts and sunlight to create rich blue images.

Objects are placed on pre-prepared 300gsm watercolour paper — a fresh pick or wilting bloom, saved pressed flower, something of the sea, a handkerchief, lace, or treasured photo negative.

When the object is lifted away, what remains is not the object itself, but its ghostly imprint—an echo held in deep blue.

Cyanotype invites reflection on loss, personal, planetary, ancestral, or abstract, and how we ritualise and return to each other in the face of what fades.

Tending sorrow
We seek to give shape to what often remains unspoken. In this creative, expressive space, we locate and capture parts of ourselves and those we love, in light.

Location
An immersive nature setting.
Private address, Tyagarah. Details will be supplied at time of booking.

All welcome
You don’t have to be arty, you do need to be willing to wholeheartedly practice deep listening.

This experience is for those over 16 yrs, all abilities are welcome. This is a welcoming and inclusive space.

We very much look forward to your company.

Please note:
All materials are supplied, and you are also invited to bring whatever holds meaning to you.
Wear suitable art friendly clothing.
No artistic experience necessary, just your willingness to show up with curiosity and care.
Therapists and clinicians may request a certificate of attendance for PD hours.

If you are not sure if this experience is right for you, please reach out to Emma Beattie at hello@beforeandafterlife.com.au

Your Facilitators:

Emma Beattie [she/her] - Before & After Life
Emma has worked and volunteered across the terrain of caring, dying and grieving since 2020. She brings an animistic, post humanist, creative and poetic lens to caring, deathing and grieving. Her work, training and studies intersect a long line of lived experienced with personal loss and from this place she offers practical supports, education and facilitation for people, families, and groups; term courses, workshops, community meets and retreats.

Emma works and collaborates with Paperbark Deathcare, she is a member of Palliative Care NSW, National Loss & Grief Association (NALAG), the Natural Death Advocacy Network (NDAN), is an advocate for Compassionate Communities Australia and appears on BayFM 99.9 as a regular guest on The Byron Beat.

Lealah Shostak [Sher/Her]
Lealah Shostak is a trained youth creative arts facilitator, her workshops encourage individual self-expression and free creative exploration. Walking her own journey with sequential loss, Lealah brings a unique depth of understanding to this workshop.