AFTER her partner, Greg Gilbert, was diagnosed with inoperable stage four bowel cancer, Stacey Heale and he had a conversation about regrets.

"I wish I'd dressed more like Marc Bolan," said Greg.

"I can't really understand now why I didn't."

In a show of solidarity, Stacey went out and bought some glam rock silver boots for herself.

"What Greg said hit me hard," says Stacey, from Bitterne Park, Southampton.

"Why hadn’t he been living how he wanted? Was it because of fear, or to avoid ridicule or because it was just easier not to? This tallies with the number one regret of the dying – ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me’. It made me question my own life and how I had been living."

Those musings are being crystallised in a new exhibition which she is curating, Everything is Now, which opens on April 26 at the Solent Showcase Gallery in Southampton.

Alongside the exhibition there will be two events, The Silver Boots Supper Club, which will give diners a chance to ask themselves the question 'what would I do if I wasn't afraid?' and a The Time Is Now, a live tattoo event, in which members of the public can have a tattoo done for free in the gallery but with a catch – it can only be of the word 'now'.

Before Greg's diagnosis and the births of her two children, now aged three and five, Stacey had a successful career as a fashion lecturer at Solent University, while Greg was known as the lead singer of indie band Delays and as an artist.

Following Greg's diagnosis, Stacey, launched a huge fundraising campaign, to cover the costs of any treatment recommended which wasn't available on the NHS, which went viral and had heavy media coverage.

Stacey says that these days, there are two things that people ask her about.

The first is Greg – he's currently undergoing a gruelling course of chemotherapy. The second is a post that she wrote about the silver boots.

They are an emblem of a philosophy that both she and Greg had already tried to embrace but which has been made all the more potent since his diagnosis: 'why wait?'.

"I don't want to get to a point where I say 'I wish I'd done that or said that when I could'," says Stacey, who writes a regular column for the Daily Echo.

She hopes that the exhibition will inspire everyone who visits it to go away and think about how they are living, and hopefully to make some changes.

"Do they have burning desires that they aren't acting on?," she says.

"Are there thing they want to say or do that they're just not doing, or that they're putting off to some time in the future – to go to New York, change jobs, tell someone they love them, etc?

"There's a Buddhist quote, 'the trouble is, you think you have time.'

"If you want something, do it now. We don't know what's going to happen in the future."

Stacey is living that philosophy by curating this exhibition. Her life is incredibly hectic, looking after two small children and caring for Greg and she admits that her first thought when she was invited to curate was 'no way, not with everything going on'.

But this is something that she is passionate about, and it was important to her to make it happen.

The exhibition will include much of Greg's work, as well as pieces by print artist The Fandangoe Kid, who seeks to smash taboos around complex subject matters such as death and trauma, Candy Chang, who will be presenting a large interactive wall entitled Before I Die, Brendan Walker, whose work is around people's emotional reactions on rollercoasters, and a further artist, to be decided.

"The theme is transformation through trauma and post-traumatic growth," continues Stacey.

"In part, it came from me watching Greg's work evolve. He'd got to a point where he was known for producing biro miniatures and he didn't feel he could move past that. It was very time consuming and physically tough, being bent over doing these detailed drawings.

"Through his diagnosis, he felt able to do something else. It started out with sculpture drawings and then went onto his convalescent drawings (which are currently being exhibited at Southampton City Art Gallery alongside an exhibition of drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci).

"Then he moved onto abstract paintings. That's what he always wanted to do when he was doing the biros. he said he wanted to be a painter, but felt constrained by what he'd become known for."

Stacey is particularly excited about the Silver Boots Supper Club. It will be a free three course meal served in the gallery for 15 strangers. To take part, people must submit an application form (by April 19), which includes details of what they will contribute to the evening and what they will get out of it.

"One of the things I've always wanted to do is to host dinner parties, but it's not something I do because I'd worry too much about whether everyone is enjoying themselves and so on," says Stacey.

"So this is on my bucket list and it's also a piece of performance art. There will be three speakers and there will also be starter questions to get people talking to each other.

"I hope it will spur people to do those things that they really want to do, to think 'why am I not doing it' and to do it."

Stacey is also looking forward to an event set to take place in June, entitled The Time is Now, which will see a tattoo artist in the gallery, giving free tattoos of the word 'now'.

"The idea is to think about both permanence and the fleetingness of time.

"It will also be a permanent reminder to bring people back to the now, as with mindfulness," says Stacey, who will be getting one of the tattoos herself.

"People often use the phrase 'live each day like it's your last,' bit it's really difficult to live like that if you're not in a situation where it feels like that, or at least that you're in your last days as you know them," she adds, reflecting on the exhibition as whole.

"I don't expect people to be able to feel like that, but it would be good if they think 'am I living the way I want to now? Is there a class that I want to do, do I want to do something with my kids, do I need to tell someone how I feel about them?'

I'd like to think there's going to be some action going to come from it."

* Everything is Now opens at Solent Showcase Gallery in Southampton on April 26. For more information, and to apply for a place at The Silver Boots Supper Club, visit www.solent.ac.uk/showcase/whats-on#silverbootsapplicationform