Murals help a family’s grief
Toby Weston painted his grandfather’s fondest memories on the walls of his childhood home as part of a high school art project that comforts the family through grief.
The shells of historic farm houses and wool sheds dot the rural landscape, their stories often lost to time.
This notion inspired Toby Weston to use the walls of his grandfather’s crumbling childhood home as a canvas to capture memories.
Murals depicting some of his grandfather’s fondest moments — time with his dogs, the embrace of his mother and a day at the races — cover the old wooden farm house at Larras Lee in central west NSW.
“The house is sitting on the farm, it hasn’t been lived in for 60 or 70 years and lots of sheep are always wandering through it,” Toby said.
“But memories aren’t always forgotten, they remain in a place even if it’s decayed or doesn’t look like it has any memories.”
Toby’s grandfather Peter Weston, affectionately known as Pepa, was able to see the murals before he died in 2021 and a video of the work was played at his funeral.
The high school art project, which still stands on the family farm, came to inform Toby’s studies in creative intelligence and innovation at Sydney’s University of Technology.
The 21-year-old is completing an internship with community care provider Proveda to help young people have conversations about grief, death and dying.
The organisation’s annual Dying To Know Day aims to break down the stigma of death and encourages people to have conversations about their end-of-life wishes.
At the Westons’ farm, the murals remain a source of comfort.
“While I was painting, I was hoping this would be there forever because the memories are all still there,” Toby said.
“My grandma, who’s living on the farm, it’s quite hard for her and whenever she has people over she’ll always take them down to the house.”