ARTIST STATEMENT

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Jesseca Lou, LadybugArt

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My work lives where love, loss and memory meet.

For over thirteen years, I have created fine-art memorial paintings that honour the profound emotional relationships we share with our animals bonds that anchor us, protect us, change us and remain long after their physical presence has gone.

My practice began long before I knew it would become my life’s work.

The loss that first shaped me was Bullseye, the dog who kept me safe, steady and seen during some of the most formative years of my life. His absence carved a space in me that needed expression, and art became the only place that could hold what grief could not put into words.

Months later, my muse arrived in Roo, my soul dog, who remained by my side until her passing in 2021.

Living with her light taught me something essential: memorial art is not an act of replication; it is an act of reconnection. It is the translation of presence a soul remembered, a bond preserved and a love that refuses to fade.

When I began creating memorial artwork openly online more than a decade ago, few people were speaking publicly about pet loss, and even fewer were turning it into fine art. I became one of the first to do so, and over the years, this practice has grown into a worldwide community of remembrance, comfort and storytelling.

Today, I am recognised as one of the original voices in pet-loss art, with hundreds of bespoke memorial artworks now held in private collections around the world.

Every piece I create begins with a story: a favourite toy, a childhood memory, a ridiculous habit, a ritual or a moment of unconditional companionship. These are the fragments that guide my hand more than any photograph can.

In the studio, I weave these stories together with familiar symbolhalos, wings, stars, stardust, daisies, moons and soft spirit light, creating works that are deeply personal yet quietly universal.

My paintings, original illustrations and memorial artwork all return to a single question that has defined my practice:

How do we keep loving an animal who is no longer here?

I believe the answer is through art. Through the human act of marking their presence, honouring their story and giving our grief somewhere to rest.

This belief also led me to create the first interactive pop-up Memory Garden a colourful, participatory space where people can write their animal’s name, share a memory and have real conversations about the lives they are remembering.

The Memory Garden now exists both as a physical experience and as a permanent virtual garden holding more than 6,000 names from around the world. It has become an extension of my artistic practice: a collective artwork that continues to grow with every name added.

Stylistically, my work blends realism with symbolic surrealism, fine detail with quietly otherworldly elements and muted tones with moments of emotional luminosity.

Each canvas is approached slowly and intentionally. Every brushstroke becomes a conversation with a memory, a moment and a soul that mattered.

My aim is not merely to portray a likeness, but to capture the feeling of them the warmth of their presence, the shape they left in someone’s life and the imprint they made upon a heart.

My work now lives in homes across the world, carried by people who are grieving, healing, remembering or simply wishing to preserve the love of a lifetime.

It is my honour and my life’s purpose to create these pieces, not simply as portraits, but as legacy artworks that hold the truth that matters most:

Love does not leave. It changes form, and art is one of the places it finds a home.

Jesseca Lou
LadybugArt