The Beauty of Art with our loved ones!

As we all know to well, life can fly by faster than we realize and its important to capture those special moments while we still can with the ones that we love most. Ashley Lee and her grandmother Linda Ellis, are able to create memories through their collaboration on artwork. When Linda was younger she was an amazing oil painter. She taught calligraphy, Ikebana (Japanese Flower arranging), and was able to capture her creations of flower arrangements by then drawing them onto paper.

As she has become older she has lost a lot of the mobility in her hands and can no longer draw and paint the way that she used to. She now has such limited mobility in her hands that she struggles to eat at times. Her granddaughter realized that art was probably something her grandmother missed more than most things as she is now bed bound and living in a nursing home. She decided to create the opportunity for her grandma to still collaborate with her and create beautiful art pieces in their own special way. Ashley takes small framed blank canvas pieces and lets Linda put her special initial touch to the canvas with a black Sharpie that fits perfectly and comfortably into her hand.

Linda loves the visit from her granddaughter and knowing that they still get to create art together at the same time.

Once Linda's part is done, Ashley takes the canvas home and uses the other colors of Sharpie's permanent marker collection, and adds her own personal touches to the piece. While she brings the canvas to life, she thinks about the times when her grandmother would sit at an easel with her and teach her how to oil paint, or create origami animals at her dining table. She puts the emotion of those memories into each piece that they create together.

For Ashley, getting to show Linda the end result is always the best part of them getting to collaborate on these artful moments together. She added everything that she was drawing with the colors and did not add any black so that she used her grandmother's part as a guide for her own. She remembered how her grandmother made butterfly magnets from soda bottles, so she added a butterfly, her grandmother's favorite color is yellow so she created a yellow vase for the flower arrangement, that also reminded her of when her grandmother used to teach Ikebana. She then added a colorful pattern for the background and once complete she delivered the piece back to Linda.

They continue to make these memories as much as possible because they both believe that tomorrow is never promised! Their combined love of art can now be turned in to permanent collaborative pieces thanks to Sharpie!