Every painting begins the same way: with a blank page, waiting. The silence of white paper can be intimidating, but it can also feel like an open sky—full of possibility, a space where something unseen might take shape if I listen closely enough.

When I dip my brush into water and pigment, I’m not simply filling space. I’m entering into a dialogue with something fleeting. The first marks are often hesitant, as if I’m asking permission. Slowly, movement begins to emerge—color spreading like breath, edges softening, water finding its own direction. In that moment, control is no longer the goal. Surrender is.

Birds have taught me this kind of surrender. They don’t cling to the air—they move through it. They trust it to hold them, to carry them, even when the wind shifts. I try to honor that trust with each layer of paint. Sometimes a bird appears quickly, its form almost urgent in the way it arrives. Other times, it lingers in abstraction for days, slowly revealing itself, as if testing whether I am patient enough to see it fully.

By the time a painting is complete, the silence of the page has transformed into something else: a winged stillness, alive yet unspoken. These birds are not meant to be decorative. They are reminders—of pauses, of transitions, of the delicate strength that lives in quiet moments.

For me, the journey from blank paper to winged silence is never just about technique. It is about learning to listen, to soften, to let go of the need for perfect lines and instead embrace what water and color choose to become. It’s a practice in humility and in presence.

When someone takes a painting home, I hope they feel more than the image of a bird. I hope they feel the stillness it carries, the breath it holds, the untranslatable language it was born from. Because in the end, it isn’t only a bird resting on paper. It’s a fragment of silence given form—a moment of flight you can keep.

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Laura Wilkins