When Ladysmith artist Sarah Leo began fainting without warning, she didn’t know if she’d ever get her health — or her rhythm — back. For two months, she lost consciousness regularly. Doctors never found a clear cause, but the experience forced her to rebuild from the inside out.
“It took everything in my power to get myself back healthy,” she said, sitting in the cosy studio of her Ladysmith home. “This is the next chapter of my life because of that.”
This chapter is one filled with art. Her creative projects span music, poetry and painting, but it’s her custom jean jackets that have become Ladysmith legends.
Born in New Westminster and raised mostly in Edmonton, Leo’s family moved to Vancouver Island when she was 10. She later earned a Bachelor of Arts followed by a Bachelor of Education. She went on to teach high school, but the realities of the classroom and long evenings of marking left no time for her own creative practice.
“I loved encouraging kids to believe in themselves,” she says. “But I realized I needed to take my own advice.”
Then her body forced the issue. Leo began fainting several times a day. Once, when she collapsed at home, she called out to her Alexa smart speaker for help. The device connected her with her husband at work, who called a neighbour to help.
Those were dark days filled with health issues and uncertainty, but Leo leaned on music to stay grounded.
“I had never really listened to blues music before,” she said. “It’s people singing about their pain, and yet when they leave the stage, they’ve done something. They’ve transmuted that negative feeling and they’ve helped other people feel human.”
That process of taking pain and turning it into something that helps others became central to her own recovery.
“Art has always given me a way to feel better. Every challenge I’ve gone through, art has helped me get to a healthy place.”
She painted, she sang, she took photos and she created a different kind of lesson plan: not one for her students, but for herself. She built what she calls her Bliss Checklist, which includes music first thing in the morning, gratitude before coffee, a deep, slow breathing practice and more.
That shift set the stage for an artistic breakthrough that started, quite literally, in her closet.
On a previous vacation to Tofino, she had fallen in love with a thrifted jean jacket that made her feel amazing when she tried it on. She brought it home, hung it up and forgot about it.
Fast forward to postpartum depression, health issues and a closet full of clothes that no longer fit. One day she came across the jacket and remembered how good it had felt in that moment in Tofino.
“I found it, put it on, and I breathed the biggest sigh of relief that I’d felt in a very long time,” she recalled. “I wore it around the house like a lunatic for two weeks. I felt great. I felt like myself. I started going out again. I was going for walks. I thought to myself, ‘I have to give other people this feeling.’ Then I was like, ‘Hey, I could paint on these.’”
And she did.
The result is custom-painted jean jackets that make the wearer feel like a rock star.
Each jacket order begins with a questionnaire Leo sends to her new client.
“I ask, How do you want to feel in it?” she said.
Clients provide their own jacket or choose from her inventory. Leo creates each piece digitally, projects her design onto the fabric, and then paints it with acrylics mixed with a fabric medium. Her signature style features text above and below a central image, with colour that seems to glow.
Her clients are mostly local, and when she has stock, she sells in stores, but most of her business is direct and through her website.
For now, her creations turn heads around town, but she’d love to see one on a red carpet someday and dreams of creating jackets for celebrity clients.
The jackets range from $120 to $220 per jacket, but the real currency is emotional. Leo lives for the moment when a customer sees her completed work for the first time. She usually mails her creations, but not always.
“Sometimes I drive the extra mile just to see the reaction,” she said. “They dance around, they scream, their eyes start tearing. It makes me feel so fulfilled to provide something that makes somebody feel that comfortable in their own skin.”
That feeling is something Leo fought hard to attain for herself, always via her art.
In addition to her jean jacket business, Leo is now an in-demand singer. She performs at venues across Vancouver Island, from galleries and universities to restaurants and bars.
Her goal has never been about recognition.
“It’s about how much impact I can leave in the places I’ve been.”
Now thriving in both life and art, Leo makes her home a creative haven with her husband, Chek TV journalist Tchadas Leo, and their young son. The family stays rooted in Ladysmith, a community Sarah credits for both inspiration and support.
“It was the first place I really felt accepted,” she said. “People here take care of each other.”
Surrounded by a caring community, Leo found the safety and support to care for herself. Now she’s inspiring others to do the same.
“If I take care of me, I take care of everybody,” she said.
It’s a philosophy that turned her own healing into art, and her art into healing for others, one song, one poem, one jacket at a time.
