About

Ancestors Tavern is a house made of images.

It was built for what remains after people are gone—stories without witnesses, rooms that remember, and the small, persistent ghosts of ordinary lives.

I’m Heather Lynn Donovan, the artist behind the work.

I’ve always been drawn to the spaces where memory settles: old buildings, inherited objects, family photographs with no names left on the back, the feeling that some places are heavier than they should be. My work grows from that pull—from personal history, from imagined folklore, from the quiet ways grief, love, and time mark a room.

Ancestors Tavern is not a brand to me.
It is a place I return to.

A way of gathering what would otherwise be lost.
A record of emotional architecture.
A collection of scenes that feel remembered even when they are invented.

Everything here is made slowly, with intention, and with respect for the stories—real or imagined—that continue to ask for a place to rest.

— Heather Lynn Donovan, Always by Candlelight