Inside the Hallway

Take a little look inside Somewhere Beautiful—a dedicated hallway where every hand-painted memento represents a child who is loved, remembered, and held within the landscape.

Honour Your
Loved One

Families are invited to request a memento to be lovingly hand-painted within the mural in memory of their baby—perhaps a butterfly, dragonfly, ladybug, or another symbol chosen in collaboration with the artist. Each memento can be personalized with your baby’s name or another meaningful detail.

Artist & Vision

This mural was created as a landscape for remembrance—a place where grief, love, and life can exist together.

I chose a loose, realistic impressionistic style, allowing visible brushstrokes, imperfect lines, familiar flowers, animals, and the recognizable textures of the natural world to remain expressive rather than precise. There is a messiness to the painting that reflects the messiness of grief itself. The layers of the landscape rise and fall unevenly across the walls, echoing the way grief moves: up and down, forward and backward, changing from one moment to the next.

At the heart of the mural are the butterflies, each representing a baby who was here and who continues to hold a very real place in the life of their family. I wanted to place them within a landscape where their mothers could imagine them being—a peaceful, familiar place that might exist beyond the walls of QueenCare. My hope is that a walk through a meadow, the sight of a butterfly, a willow tree, or familiar wildflowers might become another place to feel close to them.

The butterflies themselves are intentionally tactile. They were created with raised texture so that they emerge physically from the wall and can be touched and held beneath a hand. This was important to me as a loss Mom myself. A mother can reach out and feel the butterfly that represents her child—not simply see a painted symbol. It is a small but tangible acknowledgement that this baby was real, this love is real, and their place in their mother’s and families life remains real.

The willow tree was designed to grow around and over the doorway, with one long branch reaching across it almost like an arm around someone’s shoulders. It is meant to offer the quiet gesture of a friend who may not have the words to make grief better, but can stand beside you, put an arm around you, and offer comfort.

Ultimately, this mural is not intended to make grief neat or beautiful. It is meant to make room for it—to create a place where loss can be acknowledged, where love can remain visible, and where these babies can continue to have a place within the landscape of their families’ lives.

While the original vision for this mural was conceived by QueenCare’s founder, it has been my deep and enduring honour to help bring it to life as part of a profoundly meaningful and loving community project—one with the power to lighten the burden of loss, create space for grief, and help build a community and society in which grieving mothers and families feel more seen, held, and supported.