The space feels sacred; the stories it holds makes the air thick. Each piece of art is given space and room to breathe. Each story is tragic and each painting is beautiful, somehow capturing the essence of the loss without descending into darkness.
As I walk around the show at Applehead Studios on Barrington Street with artist and creator of The Grief Project, Chanelle Jefferson, I can’t help but ask: isn’t it heavy? Carrying all of this sadness?
“I really lean into the energetic side of things and have really learned how to become a vessel of information rather than having it come from me,” says Jefferson. “I think a lot of times when we talk to healers or people that help others, the energy comes from them and they get exhausted really quickly. Part of my journey has been learning how to bring energy through me and offer it to others.”
Born and based out of rural Nova Scotia, Jefferson received her BFA from Concordia University in Montreal. She is recognized for her use of line throughout her work as well as the spaces she creates for meaningful and conscious connection.
This is the third release of The Grief Project, and the idea originally came from Jefferson’s own story. Growing up in a very traumatic and abusive home, her first experience with grief came when her life was suddenly completely uprooted; her dad went to jail and her mom subsequently moved them out of the home and across the country.
“I experienced a lot of grief, but at the time, there was no support or recognition that what I experienced actually was grief; I was grieving someone who wasn’t dead,” says Jefferson. “One of the reasons I created this project is to offer space for all types of grief. We have people that grieve loss of land, past versions of themselves and, of course, people that have passed.”
The project came into completion when Jefferson was invited to sit in the garden of a friend who had recently passed. She was able to create a painting of all of the things that her friend had grown; it allowed her to clearly see the connection that nature has in our healing. Her work includes mixed media drawings on canvas, abstract explorations and most recently, a study of intimate figurative works.
That realization led to her putting out a call on social media in hopes of getting six people that would share their stories of grief that Jefferson would then turn into art. Within two weeks, she had over 50 submissions.
“I thought maybe I’d get like 10 responses, but was overwhelmed by the amount. The original show had six pieces, but after the first event—and seeing the response we got—I knew that there was something deeper here,” says Jefferson.
Jefferson gets emotional when she talks about the trust that people have put in her to not only share their stories, but to give them over to her to create with. It’s a huge responsibility and one that she doesn’t take lightly.
“I’m definitely honoured; these are very personal and vulnerable experiences and to put those into my hands is a lot,” says Jefferson. “But what I’ve learned is that one of the things I’m best at is channeling onto the canvas. I read their submission form, but often, things that they don’t even put on the form end up on the canvas. That’s pretty wild.”
In one instance, Jefferson created a painting for a woman that had lost her baby. For some reason, she felt compelled to include a lilac tree in the painting. She found out later that after the loss, the woman had a lilac tree outside of her window.
In another, she created a painting for a woman of the meadow where her son who passed had played. He would get really dirty, but the woman said that despite the mess, she secretly envisioned that the painting would sparkle. Jefferson couldn’t have known that, but it was the first time she felt compelled to use gold leaf in a painting—to make it sparkle.
Adding to the spiritual nature of her work, Jefferson uses a blind contour method in all of her work, meaning she created her line drawings without looking at the canvas as a daily practice of meditation and mindfulness.
“It has been a practice of learning how to connect your hand to your eye, so you’re drawing without looking at the paper at all,” says Jefferson. “It taught me how to get rid of the need for perfectionism in my work, so sometimes there’s an extra finger and sometimes a tree looks wonky, but it’s a way to learn how to accept what’s there; there’s never any eraser involved.”
One of the participants in this third installment of The Grief Project is Courtney Frost.
“My submission was for the grief I felt for the loss of life I chose not to live because I hated myself and my body so much,” said Frost on a phone call. “I kept myself so small, which is funny because I was always told that I was so big.”
She saw The Grief Project as a beautiful way to witness her true self, to allow herself to take up space and to be OK with whatever the outcome was.
When asked how she felt when she saw the painting that Jefferson had made of her story, she’s silent for a few moments and when she begins to speak, it is through tears.
“I was really nervous going in, but when I saw it, I felt like I’d come undone. I felt my younger self feeling like it’s OK and I could see all the places of my childhood where I curled up and sat—among the wildflowers or picking raspberries and blackberries—and I just felt very safe,” says Frost. “It just felt very free and very beautiful to be in that space, witnessing myself through that painting with Chanelle.”
The next release of The Grief Project will be in October and will feature 15 new works.
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2025.