Some places feel like home the moment you step into them, while others take time to feel familiar. Similarly, some people can evoke a sense of home quickly, even if you haven’t known them for very long. And sometimes, if you’ve been away from yourself too long, even your own body can feel like a place you’re trying to get back to.

I think of birds often when I think about belonging. The way they carry everything they need inside them — but still search for branches. For hollows. For high corners of quiet where they can build something soft. Something safe.

A nest isn’t permanent, nor is it meant to be, but it’s enough—a place to rest, to protect, and to become. And maybe that’s the real truth of home — not the place, not the address, but the permission it gives you to stop holding yourself so tightly.

I’ve moved through many versions of home. Some with walls. Some with people. Some I left behind without realizing I had outgrown them. And some, I’m still learning how to return to — gently, with fewer conditions.

My bird paintings carry this theme like an undercurrent, reflecting the transient nature of home. Some birds are in flight, some are perched, and others are mid-turn, as if they haven’t yet decided whether to stay or leave. They all hold a whisper of transition. The way a nest holds both the past and the possibility of something new.

I don’t think we’re meant to define home too narrowly. It can be the smell of rain in a familiar city, a playlist that brings you back to yourself, a single chair near a window, your favorite cup warm in your hands, or silence—the kind that says you don’t have to explain yourself here.

Sometimes we carry home with us. In our gestures, in the way we soften when we feel safe, in the things we reach for when no one is watching. Other times we’re searching for it — in people, in art, in nature, in language.

When I paint, I try to build that feeling. Not just with color and line, but with intention. With space. With breath. With the hope that someone will see one of these birds and feel something familiar stir in them. A memory. A longing. A recognition.

We all want to land; we all want to feel that we can stop moving for a while, that nothing will fall apart if we rest.

If that speaks to you — if you’ve been circling some sense of home but haven’t quite found it — maybe one of these birds is carrying a message back to you.

You can view the full The Air Between US Collection of original bird paintings here.

They were painted not to decorate, but to belong. To bring a small, steady sense of safety into the spaces we inhabit. And to remind you that wherever you are — you’re allowed to land.

 

Thanks for reading,

Laura Wilkins