A Co Down artist who lost her father and two brothers in a farming accident 10 years ago has told how her art gave her a "wee bit of an escape" following the tragedy.
Emma Spence, a well-known painter based near Hillsborough, revealed she walked the fields of the family farm in a bid to feel close to her father and siblings, after they died in September 2012.
Noel Spence (52), a married father-of-four and his two sons, Graham (30), who was married with two children and 22-year-old, Nevin, who was a rising Ulster rugby star, were killed in a slurry tank accident at their farm near Hillsborough.
A decade on, Emma, who is well known for her paintings capturing the landscape of the farm, has been speaking about how her work has been influenced by her family’s farming traditions and also by the tragedy.
In Emma Spence: The Art of Surviving, which is due to be broadcast on BBC One NI on Tuesday at 10.35pm, the mother-of-two recalls how she didn't paint for a time after she lost her father and brothers.
"One of things I did when they died was, I walked the fields on the farm and a lot of it was just a connection, smelling the earth that they had walked in and smelling a wee bit of their clothes and just a connection to them," she said.
"One of the big things after the boys died, to go from them being there and suddenly gone without a warning, I just wanted to see them again.
"I remember sitting in the living room, an hour when there was nobody about, and I had such an urge to draw them and try and remember what they really looked like.
"I had painted Nevin for his 21st birthday playing rugby but I hadn't painted dad and Graham so I drew them.
"They weren't for anybody to see. They were just for me. They were just to physically have them in front of me in a way, visually. It probably did help me".
Emma said she recalls seeing people with "horror" on their faces in the "early days" after the tragedy.
"Nobody had seen this before...locally, especially, nobody had witnessed anything like this," she said.
"We had to face losing three in one go. Three very healthy, fit men and to have half of your family wiped out, immediate family, it's hard and it's something that you have to walk alone but in that loneliness is probably where I felt, and in that pain, is where I tried to look to God in it, I felt him closer than ever".
As life has changed so dramatically, Emma said her "head was too busy" to focus painting.
"Even though I wasn't physically putting the paintbrush to the canvas, in my head I was painting," she said.
"In the end, I started to paint, it was nearly giving me half an hour only thinking about paint. It probably turned into a wee bit of an escape".
When she did return to painting, she began to paint the fields of the farm, from the view of what her father and brothers would have seen.
"Slowly through time, you lift your head a wee bit further and I suppose it's reflected in my painting," she said.
Reflecting on the past 10 years, Emma, who has twin boys, said:"A lot of people from the accident, when they see here as what happened on that day, think how on earth could you live where such tragedy has happened but people don't see before that, see the years of happiness.
"I think life is all about perspective and how you look at things and probably you could look at me and see a lot of pain but I read once the DNA of joy, is thankfulness and I am really thankful that I had dad, Graham and Nevin until I was 28.
"When I'm thankful for the time I had with them, it definitely has made me appreciate the people that they were. Those good points and the values that they taught me in life.
"Just because they're not with me here today, working on the farm and my brother by my side, they are still very much part of me and who I am and I hope that is reflected in the character that I am and the person I am.
"I hope they will be quietly proud that I am still painting and I am painting their fields and their hedges and they are still very much remembered and part of my life."
