Artist painted a sunrise a day to cope with grief

An artist who spent a year painting a sunrise every day to cope with her grief has been selling the artworks to raise funds for a Warwickshire hospice.

Denise Marie Walker, 60, from Sutton Coldfield, started her project on the first anniversary of her mother's death, originally to help with her own mental health.

She later started volunteering at Myton Hospice in Warwick, helping others to navigate end-of-life care as she developed fresh perspective following her own experience with loss.

Of her artwork she said: "I wanted a sunrise, not a sunset, because the symbolism is very different - the colours are similar, but it has to be about hope and new beginnings."

The artist began her sunrise-a-day painting journey in August 2023, a year after her mother Josephine died.

She had been admitted to hospital in Birmingham following an osteoarthritis flare-up and had developed Covid, sepsis and pneumonia while there.

"I was on a train on my way to work... Had a phone call to say that my mum had got two hours to live because they thought she'd got meningitis," Walker recalled. "I was in a terrible state."

Walker said her mum spent two months in hospital and later died at home.

Twelve months later, she was out in all weathers, carrying her paints and brushes in a rucksack before spending about two hours each day to capture the morning scene.

The paintings also helped Walker following the loss of her aunt Ann, who had been diagnosed with dementia shortly after the death of Walker's mother.

"My mental health wasn't good at that point," she said.

"After my mum died and after my auntie died, I couldn't really function very well at all, so on the first anniversary of my mum's death I went up to a place called Barr Beacon... and I painted the sunrise every morning for a year.

"I felt close to [my mum] because it was overlooking the cemetery, the hills... and it gave me a routine."

Now, thanks to the sale of her paintings at arts and craft fayres across the country, she is raising money for charity, with Myton, where she volunteers, as the recipient.

She said she helped out at an inpatient unit there as a way of giving something back.

"I am a new person, I am really happy," she explained.

"I've had to face a lot of very dark days, but I've done it responsibly.

"I am in a really, really good place."

Follow BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.