This past year as the seasons turned, I experienced life where I could simply be. Talking walks in nature, making paintings and cherishing moments of quiet each day. With each new day I explored what life brought my way. Having found quiet in my days I spent time exploring the simple quiet musings of the natural world and establishing my everyday through these experiences. Of which became my muse and the subject for paintings.
Simple quiet musings began to deeply inform my paintings. Day by day the natural world revealed itself to me, we began to harmonize. Embracing each season including its ever changing weather, has been a true gift that I have waited a lifetime to experience authentically and which has weaved its way into my paintings. As I explored the landscape and reflected on my place within it, my vision became vividly clear offering me a unique way of seeing the landscape and guiding me in how I interact with my surroundings. Colour, light and form within the landscape became ever present in my art practice, I began openly exploring my process of making paintings which ultimately brought me to the paintings I make today.
Many of my favourite moments from this year include the wildlife that I live amongst in the Northumberland Hills. I spend time everyday looking for sightings in the landscape, especially in the winter snow where I can observe animal tracks. This year I observed a mama black bear with her two cubs across the field, she was sitting upright legs stretched taking in nature like myself while her young were climbing and swinging from the tree branches. Also on my list was a mother fisher cat and her two babies which was a treat as they are solitary in nature.
The field also attracted sandhill cranes, dozens of deer, wolves, coyotes, hundreds of Canada geese, turkey vultures, wild turkeys, hawks, and kildeer. At the pond we had several pairs of different species of ducks who all had sets of ducklings, a muskrat with their young brood, a snapping turtle, several eastern painted turtles who trekked up the pond bank to lay their young and a plethora of frogs, toads and even snakes.
And returning this year was a long list of 56 birds migrating and summering including indigo buntings, Scarlett tanagers, Baltimore orioles and rose-breasted grosbeak to name but a few. I witnessed an ibis and great a blue heron, crows, ravens and our nesting eastern kingbirds who make this their summer home in our library porch. We were gifted an eastern screech owl who perched out our bedroom window for over a week, we named him Percy and lastly, my happy little hummingbirds. A plethora of moths and butterflies and other insects, including two female dobson flies and I finally witnessed a clear winged hummingbird moth. All of which I recorded by species and date in my notebook.
This has been a memorable year in my life, moments of which I have recorded by hand in my notebooks and sketchbooks. Offering many ideas for new paintings. With each passing day I deepened my relationship with the land I call home, these experiences becoming my everyday life and offering me a way to be in the world. As an artist this was a pivotal year of which I am excited to continue my work in studio begin sharing my new body of work in 2026.
Jane Holden Art 