Contacting Families of the Soldiers

Shairl is busy working on locating the families of the Canadian soldiers who have lost their lives in the Afghanistan war. In the meantime we are delighted when a family contacts us and invites us to interview them to be part of the project.

She will be travelling from Edmonton to the Vancouver area during the first part of June and hopes to meet and interview at least one soldier's family along the way. It's a precious gift when the families embrace Project Heroes and support the project by sharing their photos and stories. Most interviews take 3 - 5 hours, as there is much to talk about in order to learn about their family member, photos and letters to review, and stories that are both happy and sad. Learning about the soldiers that we are going to paint makes the experience of painting their portraits that much more poignant.

The brushes are wagging....

Shairl and Susan have been drawing two young corporals, while Cindy has been working on a commemorative painting for the exhibition.

Although the subject of our paintings is sad because we have lost these heroes to the Afghanistan war, there is some happiness for us because they will 'live' in their paintings for many, many years into the future. We feel so grateful for the opportunity to help them do that.

This week we are contacting some more families of fallen soldiers so we can start on some new paintings for the exhibition.