I started painting birds because I couldn’t quite explain something I was feeling — and they seemed to speak it for me.

Reflecting on my motivation, I find there’s something ancient about the way a bird moves, something that doesn’t ask for attention but commands it all the same. Sometimes I think they hold a language older than words. Not the chirps and songs we hear in trees, but the quiet kind. The kind you feel in your body before you ever notice with your mind — the way your breath softens when you see one lift into the sky, the way time seems to pause when wings sweep across open light. That’s what I try to paint.

Watercolor makes sense for capturing the essence of birds. It moves like air, like memory, and forces you to be present, to surrender. There’s no controlling it. No hard edges. No perfection. Just a brush, a breath, and the space between. The birds I paint, such as owls, spoonbills, cranes, swallows, and geese, aren’t just illustrations. They are gestures, symbols, emotional vessels for stillness, longing, transition, and peace. They carry the weight of things I don’t always know how to say.

Some of them are in motion — wings wide, claws ready, wind gathering behind them. Others are at rest. Watching. Waiting. They hold a kind of intelligence I admire: they know when to act and when to be still. And maybe that’s what I’ve always been drawn to. Not just their beauty, but their restraint. Their instinct. Their belonging to the world without apology.

I think people who bring birds into their homes — through paintings, prints, carvings, stories — are often craving that same kind of presence. Not performance. Not noise. Just a little quiet reminder. A gentle witness on the wall that says: you’re allowed to soften here. You’re allowed to return to yourself. Not everything has to be earned through effort.

This blog, The Language of Birds, is my attempt to extend the expression I find in painting into words, speaking in the spaces between feathers. It’s a place for meaning — quiet, real, sometimes tender. It’s for anyone who finds themselves pausing when they see wings overhead. For anyone who feels things deeply, even when they don’t know how to name them. For those of us who have always searched the sky for something we couldn’t quite touch.

If you’d like to see the birds I’ve painted — the ones that came through when I was learning to listen — you can visit this collection here. They’re available as original watercolor paintings and fine art prints, and each one carries a little bit of that unspoken language. A phrase I couldn’t write, so I let the brush say it instead.

Sometimes you don’t need the right words.
Just the right stillness.

You can explore the full collection here → [link]

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Thanks for reading!

Laura Wilkins