Kuan Yin Original Art by Nicola Bird
Kuan Yin is the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, known as she who hears the cries of the world. She calls to those who can always find a kind word for someone else and would love to speak to themselves with that same tenderness.
Kuan Yin is the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion. She brings the patience to hear someone out, especially when what they’re saying is difficult to hear. Her gift is making room for another person’s experience before deciding what might help. There’s a particular kindness in being able to sit beside someone you love and let them take as long as they need to find the words.
Each goddess takes her turn to enter my soul and find her way onto my canvas. Click 'NOTIFY ME' if you'd like to be emailed when she arrives.
about the artist
Nicola Bird
I didn't pick up a paintbrush until I was 52, shortly before my mother died. It felt as though she handed me her torch, and I've been painting ever since.
Before that, I built businesses, wrote books, raised a family and spent years helping people navigate change. My paintings come from all of it: the joy, the grief, the menopause, the reinvention, the particular ache of the in-between.
I paint instinctively. Music on, paint down, following the feeling rather than a plan. I want my work to hit you in the gut, change the way you breathe, and create that unmistakable moment when you look at a painting and know, without question: she's mine.
My collectors tend to be women at midlife and beyond who have lived enough to recognise something in the work. They don't choose a painting because it matches the sofa. They choose it because they've been through the fires of midlife and a part of them wants to be reclaimed.
