Bronwyn Ward, Murmuration I,2023, engraved glass, photo Sean Paris

Sarah Stewart writes about Bronwyn Ward’s invocation of birds on glass as a way of reflecting on loss.

Ascendant

Earthly work brought artist Bronwyn Ward closer to heavenly exploration than she would have anticipated. As an artist, hospice therapist, and palliative care ward artist-in-residence, she has found threads that connect the realms of the visible and invisible, where creativity can alleviate suffering, and nurturing others precipitates a creative experience. In turn, these experiences reverberate throughout her own creative practice as she experiments with matter, light, science and emotion. And along the way, Bronwyn’s lifelong love of birds found its place in her practice.

“I worked as a therapist in a hospice in the UK for eight years and it was very heavy work. I was quite often the last person someone saw before their loved one died, and the first one they saw after the death, so I was very much the bookends for a lot of people who were involved at the hospice. I worked a lot with patients who were very, very sick and dying.

“For my self-care, I took my printmaking and drawing practice back up, and I’d go out onto Salisbury Plain and watch the birds. That was my way of looking after myself with that heavy work. It was the way I needed to respond to that load: to go and sit and watch and remind myself that life is going on, all the time.”

Her understanding of the starlings’ murmuration as a metaphor for community came after that work ended, when she later worked as an artist in residence in the palliative ward at Liverpool Hospital in Sydney. “Being present as an artist as someone is dying, I got to witness the power that art brings to that space. It was an extraordinary gift, to be witness to that and see the incredible things that came from just being there as an artist – not as an art therapist, not wanting any outcomes, just being in there and asking someone about their life stories and translating it into art, and presenting it back to them and their families.”

Resplendent

While birds circle thematically around and within Bronwyn’s work, drawing is the throughline that informs the many tendrils of her practice, expressed with graphite and paper, paint and canvas, textiles and, most recently, glass.

In drawing, the act of making a mark embodies a moment passing: one’s experience, one’s impression, left on the page. It denotes that which was held in the body and expressed through the hand that held the pencil.

For Bronwyn, this act of drawing translates easily between mediums and is consistent with her subject. “Carrying people across the threshold from caring to bereavement – the way I’ve interpreted that over time has changed. Pencil, drawing, printmaking, painting and now glass. I find that each material has offered something different. I’m finding I need the new material to continue the exploration.”

Incandescent

Bronwyn Ward, studio view, 2025, courtesy of the artist

Death catalyses disintegration: it’s difficult to hold onto memories of a loved one who was once so corporeal, complete. Bron has witnessed the gaps that arise when the body is no longer present. She has found glass, and all its luminous qualities, to be a conversant medium for her creative expressions of death, dying and bereavement.

“Glass is proving an exciting new medium for this work. By nature, it’s both fragile and strong; it is ghost-like, an echo of something no longer. Its ethereal qualities speak perfectly to me and my practice. It’s a magical material.”

Her appreciation for the scientific qualities of the medium is matched by a scientific approach to her subject.

“When I decided I wanted to bring birds in as a subject, the first thing I did was get books on ornithology. I spent time looking at skeletal systems, muscular systems, how the wings are formed in patterns. Also – because my process is so slow – part of that was just watching, all the time, because birds rarely, if ever, stop. They are constantly moving in some way.”

Transcendent

A murmur of the heart: will you remember me? Bronwyn’s is memory work via murmuration. Not by one heart but by many: assembling each other in a collective heart space that honours and upholds them in spite of, or perhaps within, the space we leave behind.

“I love that there is so much mystery in the murmuration. We don’t really understand how they fly – we know there is a collective messaging, where a bird takes its cue from the seven to nine birds around them but there’s no one bird that’s leading. So each of those birds is informed by those around them. And on it goes. It’s an incredible feat of nature – a wonder. Death is also a wonder, a miracle in reverse.

“In our western culture we’re not very good with [death]. Families that are dysfunctional don’t suddenly become functional when a family member is dying. There’s lots of complexity that sits around that space: a lot of bewilderment, a lot of fighting, a lot of tension and stress. My job was to relieve some of that, to take a bit of that load.”

Indeed, this work continues, now via her drawing on and with glass. In contrast to the “heavy work” of palliative care therapy, Bronwyn’s creative work is light, embodied. Reflecting the delicate nature of death and its challenges, she honours the heavenly realm with her fine and considered pieces that are at once uplifting and grounding.

About Bronwyn Ward

Bronwyn is an internationally exhibited visual artist. Her work aims to imitate the beauty and wonder that can happen close to a death, and she explores many different mediums and techniques to express this. Bronwyn has had work acquired by Bendigo Bank and has exhibited widely, including at the Hong Kong Design Institute, the Royal Academy of the West of England and Red Earth Gallery Melbourne. Follow @bronwyn.ward.artist

About Sarah Stewart

I make jewellery and small objects from my small home studio in Tarrawarra, Wurundjeri Country. My practice incorporates metals and found materials to fabricate jewellery and small objects; my work is concerned with the expression of relationship and states of being through symbolic representations of weather, emotions and the cosmos. Each piece serves as an artefact to carry memory, convey meaning and show how adornment can function in the labour of love. With a professional background in writing and editing, I love to explore craft and connect readers to makers through storytelling. Follow @sanctuary.precinct

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birds | death | G40 | glass | Sarah Stewart | Victoria