As we enter a new year…

January 3, 2026

I have always loved the winter holidays. Creating a magical holiday season for my family brings me so much joy, as we adorn the house with lights, decorate the tree, hang the stockings, and  bake sweet treats for ourselves and for others. One of the things I enjoy most about the holidays is making gifts. The sewing machine comes out and fabric takes over the studio. My twelve year old daughter also loves to sew, and we made a monumental mess out of my studio this year!

Now that the holidays are over, the studio is (mostly) cleaned up, and the kids are about head back to school. As always after a stretch of time that I can’t focus on my work, I am very eager to get back to my drawings and paintings!

So this seems like a great time to look back on the last year in the studio, and to look forward to the one ahead. 

As many of you know, I took a break from my oil painting last year when I was caring for my son while he struggled with long covid. I shifted my focus to graphite, which allowed me to take advantage of any small amount of time I could find to escape to the studio. I had a few compositions that I had been planning to draw, so I was happy to step back from the easel and move to my drawing table. I always love rendering seaweed and branches, and was pleased with the new work, but after a few drawings I started to feel like it was time to push my way into new territory. 

The landscapes were a huge step for me, and I don’t say this often, but I am very proud of them. Every one of them has brought new challenges, as I have shifted from zooming in to render small details to stepping back to capture an entire scene. I live in such a beautiful area of Maine, and being outdoors, in the woods and on the water, is a huge part of my daily life. I am inspired every time I step outside, so to be able to honor the beauty around me by rendering the places I love has been incredible for me. I have chosen, thus far, to draw them all the same size, which I find to be a powerful way to present a body of work (I did the same with the moon shells). I have drawn twelve scenes, each 7” by 7,” and I have more planned. 

I also spent a lot of this past year knitting, and one project in particular sparked a whole series of new Horizon watercolors. I was using two different yarns together, one of which was variegated and had wonderful palette shifts that were revealed as I knitted. The whole time I was working on the project I kept envisioning those hues as translucent watercolor marks on a horizon. I was inspired to combine colors in a new way, which was incredibly fun and exciting! 

As I look ahead to the new year, I definitely want to continue with the landscapes. Some of them are very much begging for color, so I will see what happens as I shift back to the easel! Some of the scenes that I have already drawn have little moments within them that I think could make lovely smaller compositions in graphite. As always, I love to experiment and play with watercolors, so there will be more horizons at some point… And I think the biggest question I have yet to answer for myself is whether or not I will get back to all of the paintings I had planned (compositions ready, canvases stretched, even some gradient grounds ready and waiting) before my son got sick last year. 

That is as much clarity as I can muster about the year ahead. I have so much I am inspired to do, but I never know for sure where that will lead me. Whatever emerges, I look forward to sharing it with you!