Welcome to my website!
My name is Jenna Martin Leitch and I’m an artist, illustrator and writer from Fife, Scotland.
My work is inspired by the treasures I find, in my everyday life and in the natural world. The joy they bring to me. The “happy” they make me feel.
I collect things; In my pockets, through my eyes, with my mind, and in my heart. The things we have lost. The things we have found. The sum of our parts. Through written word, drawn line, and painted hue; I make sure the magic is remembered and the JOY I FEEL is paid forward.
I feel the pull to ‘home’.
As time passes, we become aware of just that… time passing.
With each moment, within each minute, or hour, or day… time moves from then to now. We can LIVE in these moments, or we can give in to the transience, and let time pass without choosing to enjoy or notice what is happening before us.
When I run, it takes a while before my legs wake up, and with that, from that moment, I can then look around and take in the world around me. Birds in trees, snowdrops blooming, catkins on branches, clouds fleeting across the sky.
The colour of bark on silver birch trees, mosses and lichen clinging to their sides. The seasons making way for each timely nuance to grace where my feet and eyes fall upon and witness.
I love the feeling of knowing I’m alive. Footsteps in sequence, the sound of my breath, the wind breezing past my face and filling my lungs.
The aliveness, and the time I spend outside leads to thought and reminiscing. Memories play out and stories build in unison.
Home. Bennachie. Tifty. The dog violets on the fallen dyke. The stream under the Tifty bridge. The Ythan flowing gently past the castle and onwards to Newburgh. Estuary and tides. The continuity of nature’s cycle.
Time. The circularity and the continuing turn of those moments. In my mind.
My parents. My Mum. My Dad.
Our lives are enriched by the love we are lucky to share. The love imbued by time shared. That love lives on in the places where it was conjured and felt. I’m sure of it.
And so… I think of home frequently just now. As the wind howls outside. As my children chatter in the adjoining room. As my cats sleep upstairs.
The love lives on… in all of this. As it lives in me. And always will.
We are all ‘home’ I think.
#JOYimprinted
#homeiswithinus
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#inspiredbynature
#bennachie
A new moon hung in sky. Fresh faced, yet to be at fullest. Days to wait for that, and come he will, the man in the moon.
The light yesterday was like clarity in situ. Like the breath of life released, had shooed away any darkness. Only light remained, and it was bright!
Mist through morning trees, cast rays, in shafts like sheet music. Diagonals and horizontals, with silent tune lament. Suspended in air. Golden. Like palpable sparkle. I felt it was graspable. Fold it up. Place it in my pocket. For a later date.
A sliver of golden orange, a cloud in streak across blue, lay still, and took our breath away also. My daughter exclaiming, and we spoke of cloud patterns. How Dad would have known what it was called. Cloud named.
A walk by loch side, frosty, surface frozen, and birds walking, on water. Solidified. Gulls, ducks, swans. Looking a wee bit confused, but getting on with their days nevertheless.
At one point, birdsong rang loud, just over my left shoulder. Sunlight surrounded, rear lit, a little robin. Boldly singing. Unflinching at my close proximity. He sang and sang and sang, and I stayed stock still so as to watch, and listen. Take in his little puffed up chest, and witness the song leave his body. Proclaiming.
At night, aurora. Richer and brighter than anyone had seen. Photos galore. Dad was up there with it. This time.
Robins appear, they say, and so does magic. Aurora borealis and light like no other. Proof in the ether.
~ Jenna Martin Leitch
#robin
#robinsappear
My Dad died yesterday. I will miss him so very much… he was the best. 💛
Ripples in the cosmos.
Watch a film. Listen to some music. Go for a walk. Call a friend. Spend time in the gym. Watch your kids play football. Go to an art gallery. Visit a museum. Sit with your Dad, or your Mum, if you’re lucky enough to still have them. Read a book. Write a letter. Sit with a cat in your lap. Chat to a dog if you see one. Listen to the birds. Go to the beach. Paddle. Rock pool. Close your eyes and listen to the waves.
Search out wonder. Look close. See the details.
Search out kindness. Be part of the kindness in the world.
It feels like the world wants us to witness all things bad. There are awful atrocities occurring, we don’t have to fuel their fire. Their hate and their spiral.
We aren’t being pointed to artists, musicians, nature and joy. Seek it out. Seek them out.
I wish I could do more. I try to keep the close things in my life brighter.
A ripple in the cosmos.
Ripples in the cosmos.
Jen x
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#JennaMartinLeitchWriter
#ripplesinthecosmos
Still here! Not sure I officially said ‘Happy New Year’ to you lovely lot?! Well, I have now!
The last few days of this new year have been a lot! A Saturday at the vets, looking after my Dad, girls going back to school, sorting out my and my Dad’s accounts (oh the veritable joys!)!
The highlight has definitely been getting some miles in and some time at the gym for #TeamScotland for @myname5doddie @doddie_aid 2026!
My @werunedinburgh yellow tee matches perfect with my snood, and I have my Mum (as an albatross) and a charm for my wee Dad (a lighthouse) round my neck also, helping to guide my way.
I am part of a team for @anniekenyonarchitects back home in Aberdeenshire. I make sure and take part to show support for Annie and her family, her lovely Mum, and for the other people in the world for whom MND has become a part of their lives.
I’m stood, currently, in our home, my cat Alba on the table beside me (because rules don’t apply to her… apparently!) and listening to the rain on our roof windows.
The snow is dissipating with every rain drop fallen. A squirrel feeds at the peanut feeder, filled up for the garden birds who visit. There are snowdrops peeking out here. Waking up and rubbing their tiny eyes some day soon no doubt. Bowed head. Bright as snow itself.
I’ve miles to drive this evening, for football training, and so I’ll pack the car with requirements in due course.
Life has the ability to be simple, if we let it. Life generally, however, likes to throw spanners in the works, with inevitability.
Still, we continue. We always do. We are lucky for that.
💛
Big love all.
Jen x
#JOYimprinted
#akd
#taighsolais
#albatross
The moonlight this morning was phenomenal! 🌕
Cat tail in silhouette, to brighten it even further.
Beauty in the night. Which was my morning.
#JOYimprinted
#themoon
#gealach
A new year is never truly a new beginning, but we still feel it to be. We are quested to believe it as necessity…
Somehow, amongst it all, we are urged to create a ‘something different’ for ourselves. In with the new.
We are inherently tempted to embrace this, but in all honesty, I’m so very aware, that the year new, is merely a continuation of the year past. Not in a bad way, it’s an onward journey, which we can continue to forge and to sculpt, into a way of creating a better life for ourselves, and refreshing our way of existing.
Not new. But more honed to our why and our will. It’s a way to perhaps pick layers to focus on. Parts of us that need a bit more space to exist. A continuation. More in line with the values that we cultivate through living our lives.
As so, this next while, I know I have things that are within my controllable grasp. Aspects that will vastly
improve my wellbeing, and the weight of all that has felt so heavy in the last months.
There are elements of my and my families life, which, if actioned, can support us both in body and in mind. In financial capabilities and in our aims for this year moving onwards.
Doing our best, on any given day, is just that… us doing our best.
Something has to change… 2025 felt like I was standing on a treadmill that was going that bit too fast. It felt like a rollecoaster I couldn’t get off. I felt like as much as I tried, life was getting on top of me. I’ve spent so much time worrying about my Dad, naturally. He’s my Dad afterall. I realise now, as I have done previous, that his health is something I cannot control. It’s a fact that in its truth, has actually kept my head above water. It’s been a lot to contend with. Even on good days. Even on bad…
Amazingly, amongst all of it, it still seems I am still the ‘calm maker’. Still the joy bringer and the warmth provider. I am still an inspiration to some. I am still a guiding light in the dark to many. I help others to think with clarity.
I am loved. I am supported. I have an amazing little family, and the best friends along for the ride.
Tiny steps as always. Kindness in each tread. We head into the New Year.
#JOYimprinted
Hope lives in the tiny moments that catch us by surprise.
On a woodland wander back home, after my morning run, seeing these little shoots…
Snowdrops seeking light and life, rising above leafy covering.
Their arrival feels like space to breathe is being created also.
Seasons in mid shift. Awakening.
#snowdrops
#noticing
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#JOYimprinted
Yesterday I spent time with each of my family. My husband, children, Dad, our cats and my brother (on the phone).
It was a quiet day with little fuss. A whole lot of love and gentle joys at home.
I’ve found this year, that all things festive, have felt more emotive. More profound. More evocative of emotion and meaning. Christmas carols, candlelight, presents given, cards and letters written. Christmas concerts, time with friends, the decoration of our home, the magic created.
A trip home to lay flowers with my Mum. Time spent nearby where I used to live. Conversations and time outside.
Each part has felt so enriched by age and by years of Christmases past.
I’m now a Mum, a daughter with a Father so frail, and with my own Mum, who I think of often, and whom’s traditions are now so much part of my own.
Siginificance of spiritual art and stories of Christmas traditions across the world, have sat with me, and I’ve felt their wonder, and their history eternal, in my now. Like puzzle pieces all converging together, the days are intertwined.
Layers upon layers upon layers. Life is not one moment in time, but a convergence of so many moments, across aeons. Time immemorial.
It’s all felt more, bigger and, although not entirely ‘better’, definitely richer.
Then today, after a long and amazing sleep, I went a run, and felt stronger than ever before, in recent times anyway.
I found a nest left unoccupied. I found a tiny feather in my path.
I walked, rosy cheeked. Back home.
Knowing, that it all just continues. Nest and flight. Onwards. We go.
#JOYimprinted
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
Early this morning, I stepped outside to put one foot in front of the other.
Stepping into the day, as night tucked the stars in, and sunshine woke from slumber.
The sky rippled with warmth, embers burning brighter, ignited by day. A sky fire burning. In time.
The light binds us and our way is brighter for it.
This year I have spoken of the darkness more than the light. One to the other. An otherness. Imagery ‘of the night’ has stemmed from my paintbrush and pencils.
These dark months. Days where it has felt so very dark; and day has met night more often than not…
The decreasing and the less. We light candles as if to fill the space. Add warmth and glow, where none resides, bar the moonlight.
And from hereon in, today, the solstice, the shortest day and longest night, the light will trickle back. Edge into the corners, nooks, our lives gradually, becoming illuminated once more.
I love the bright mornings. Quiet miles in sunrise daylight. Warmed and bequeathed by that early sun, rising in my sky.
With a year, and recent days, where darkness has felt more apparent, I am so glad the light is returning. However gradual, it will grace us. Grace my own days and life.
A lit path. A Holloway with light at the end of the tunnel. Awakened and glowing.
Lilacs. True lilac. Pinks, warmed. Silver, made golden. Warmer tones and a face bathed. Moths dancing, and butterflies thereafter. Following in their wake to similar blooms. Owls to garden birds.
We continue. We shine. As the sun does also. Night turns to day.
The Winter Solstice is here.
#lighthouse
#wintersolstice
#ofthenight
#nightturnstoday
The evolution of me. Of what I’ve created over time. Of what I’ve done. Become. Loved and cherished.
My imagination playing out over the last 6 years.
I like this time of year, as a chapter mark. A break in the momentum of time. Of tide.
Life lapping at the shores and ice forming at the edges.
A softening of the way we meet ourselves somehow.
In turn, of how I choose to show what I do to the world. To all of you.
I’ll continue… but, I’m so glad to have a few days home, with my little family, in the near, and mean time.
Go gently into the coming days. Step outside. Be with your loved ones. Find solace in the candlelight.
Move forward still. But with smaller steps, and on tippy toes. Quietly and with whispered words.
Jen x
#JOYimprinted
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#evolution
#JennaMartinLeitchWriter
