AN innovative artist is painting portraits of the deceased made from their ashes in a painstaking process during which she talks and argues with their photos.

    Heide Hatry, 51, developed the method when a close friend committed suicide in 2008, which brought back unresolved issues around her own father’s death.

    Having recently witnessed a cremation for the first time, the German artist was inspired to use her friend’s ashes to recreate her likeness using a photograph of her.

    She uses layers of wax and then adds the ash, piece by piece using a scalpel, to create the portraits, which will soon be exhibited in the Ubu Gallery in New York.

    Heide said, “I was in a terrible state of grief because a close friend, who I had no idea was in such distress, had just committed suicide.

    “It not only devastated me but also brought back all the unresolved pain I had felt over my father’s death 15 years earlier.

    “By chance, I had recently seen cremated ashes for the first time and I had been deeply moved by the experience.

    “Probably as a result I had the idea, which did come as a kind of flash, of making portraits of my father and my friend out of their ashes.”

    She added, “For me the portraits were life-changing since I had to perfect the technique while I worked, but at the end I felt a sense of solace that was astonishing.

    “At first I thought that it must have had to do with the process itself, which is extremely painstaking and highly meditative, and during which I was in deep communion with their images, often talking or arguing out loud with them as if they were there.

    “But then a friend who knew what I was doing and who had lost his own mother at an early age and always felt that their relationship was unresolved asked me if I would make a portrait out of her ashes for him, which I did, and he described a very similar experience to what I had also felt, a profound and consoling sense of her presence.”

    Heide perfected a time-consuming method, until it took just three to four months to complete. She has produced over 30 portraits using ashes to replicate the subject’s likeness using a photograph provided by the families.(SD-Agencies)