Sorrow and Rescue: Artworks by Bernadette Lourdes Lonestarr

A trio of works by Westgate-based artist Bernadette Lourdes Lonestarr are on show at Westgate Galleria during May 2026, in a fund-raising exhibition for PETA.

The core artwork - Sorrow and Rescue - is a large one-off canvas print from the artist’s original oil and acrylic painting, presented in a hand-gilded 18th century frame under gallery-standard matt glass. The frame is removable, and the bespoke border means this piece can be hung without a frame. It is a true one-off, created especially for this event and is available for purchase.

Sorrow and Rescue was born from one young life drawn back into the light after fifteen days buried beneath the collapse of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. An estimated 220,000 to 300,000 people lost their lives. 1.5 million people were displaced. 300,000 homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed. Bernadette's painting is inspired by the survival of Darlene Etienne and the French International Rescue team who found her. Darlene’s figure — frail, unbroken, determined — is the axis of this work. It asks this: we all want to be stood up for, to be saved, to be searched for when we are lost, buried, injured, or in pain. We celebrate, rightly, when one person is found against all odds. We want to be championed in crisis. This work draws a line between the instinct to rescue our own, and the blind eye we turn to the suffering of animals.

The Small Sorrow (I didn't want know this) is a NFS acrylic and oil piece that shows a female figure merging from a black egg-shaped void, who is carried on waves beneath a wounded moon. The surrounding black oblong is the doorway she passes through — the space left when one rescue ends and another begins. This artwork’s frame is built from wreckage: off-cut wood, paint-saturated board, stains, bubbled and degraded to hold the damage. The work speaks to a ruined world: if we cannot show mercy to animals, how will we show it to each other? A magpie feather is affixed — one for sorrow.

Third Sorrow - The Hunted  is a NFS photomontage featuring the artist’s current work in progress, an oil and pressed poppy leaves piece on a 1960's cupboard door. The work speaks to bullying, grief, and the skinning alive of the hunted. The raw skin reflects the raw wounds left by predators. The real poppy leaves are fragile now, like memory. The clowns are the people who laugh while making handbags from crocodiles.

Fine art prints of these artworks, beautifully produced by AG Studio in Old Town, Margate, are available to purchase, and to order.

You can also purchase tickets for an opportunity to win a mounted A3 or A2 (your choice) print of the Sorrow and Rescue work.

Bernadette has also commissioned a small selection of unisex t-shirts featuring Sorrow and Rescue, available to purchase at this exhibition, in a range of sizes.

This exhibition supports Bernadette's ongoing project World Animals in Crisis Created Across Nations (WAICCAN). All proceeds from the exhibition’s sales and donations, will go to PETA’s campaign to act against the extreme cruelty inflicted on crocodiles and alligators, administratively facilitated by Westgate Galleria for the artist.

Information on supporting the project and PETA's campaign is available throughout the exhibition, and visitors are invited to donate too, in exchange for stickers and mini glow-in-the-dark crocodiles.