Heart Trail for St Barnabas Coming Soon to Lincolnshire
A brand new art trail will be coming to Lincolnshire next summer, thanks to St Barnabas Hospice.
This year, the hospice celebrates a milestone of 40 years at the heart of the community. It cares for and supports thousands of people across Lincolnshire. A very special anniversary deserving of a very special celebratory trail.
Named the HeArt Trail, the trail aims to adorn the streets of Lincolnshire with 40 heart shaped sculptures. Colourful designs bringing colour and joy to the county. Fittingly, the hospice chose the heart emblem for their trail sculpture as people are at the heart of everything they do.
As the hospice has bases in Louth, Grantham, Spalding, Boston, Gainsborough and Lincoln, they felt it important to expand their trail countywide. Key areas for the trail will include Skegness and the coast, which are popular for tourists throughout the summer months. These areas being of particular significance to help inject trade following the disturbance of the pandemic.
Bringing The Community Together
St. Barnabas wants this trail to act as a ‘creative device’, bringing together artists, businesses, schools, and communities. Together they will celebrate both the hospice and everything our beautiful county has to offer. In fact the theme for the trail artwork will be things that people love about Lincolnshire.
Also, an exciting first for this trail is that it will include not only embellished and painted sculptures, but also completely bespoke hearts. These could be sculptured from an array of materials. This really opens up the possibilities for more artists to get involved with creating designs.
If you’d like to find out more about becoming an artist on the trail please visit the St Barnabas website.
Heart Trail Artist Ambassador
I was delighted when St Barnabas asked me if I would be their Artist Ambassador for their trail.
Having created a number of pieces for previous art trails across the city (which you can find at my Portfolio), I’m looking forward to acting as a liaison between new artists as they join the trail. I’m hoping I can use my knowledge and expertise to help with any queries they may have or advice they many need.
St Barnabas also asked me to create and paint a design for their promo heart for the trail. A heart that they will be able to take around Lincolnshire over this summer to promote next year’s trail.
My design for their promo heart features elements of the official trail branding, which was created by local design and print agency Ruddocks.
Over the past couple of months (with a short break in-between when I was poorly with Covid) I painted St Barnabas’ heart in the Waterside Shopping Centre, Lincoln. As with a number of previous trails, the Waterside are onboard as a sponsor. This means I’ve been fortunate enough to paint pieces in public there a number of times. This is something I really enjoy, as it allows the public to see the piece come to life and get inquisitive about the trail.
A Heart Design Requiring a Steady Hand
As with much of my work, I wanted the final painting to have a very clean and crisp look. I wanted to keep the design quite simple, making effective use of design elements that lead you on a little trail around the sculpture itself.
As you can imagine, this design required a very steady hand, but I’m really pleased with how it turned out.
It can be quite daunting painting in public, especially when working on such precise shapes. It also means there’s nowhere to hide when you make a mistake or when your design’s on display during its ‘messy middle’ stage. Needless to say it’s always a huge sigh of relief when the painting is complete and the varnish is on. Plus the varnish really does make the colour pop!
If you’d like to catch a glimpse of the completed sculpture, it will be appearing across Lincolnshire over the summer. Do keep your eyes peeled!
In the meantime, if you’d like to see more of my work please check out my Portfolio.
You can also contact me if you have any queries about my work or commissions.
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