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.
✨💚✨
B u r n i s h e d B r a s s
Another beauty that I was lucky enough to have witnessed in the Glen on our recent stay. I’ve never seen this moth before, and the shimmering green on its wings was just breathtaking.
Like a piece of enameled jewellery, it stayed and rested, and I was able to examine it close up.
Sat with wings folded upon the tip of a paintbrush. A glimmer itself in the morning sun.
Magic exists in the everyday, or the every night, and sometimes we just don’t see it. It flies around the edges of our lives, and we aren’t even aware of its existence.
Still so very grateful for this stay at Milton, the waterfall close by holding such significance, and I felt so close to my parents while we were there.
Then beauty alighted in plain sight, and I felt like my life had reached this pinnacle moment for a reason.
Glittering. Green. Aglow.
And we were there to see it.
#miltoneonan
#mothtrap
#burnishedbrass
#thetinydetailsandthefaraways
#magicintheeveryday
“The river flows
It flows to the sea
Wherever that river flows
That’s where I want to be”
I ran by the River Tay early yesterday morning. Having not ran in near to a couple of weeks, to feel I could breathe and witness morning light, so gentle and sparkling, was a beautiful way to start my day.
Watching the water ripple in dance under that quietly rising sun. Stopping at end of my miles, and just feeling so grateful that I was able to complete it, and in such a glorious place.
Walking back to my car, to head to work. From being solo, to amongst many. From near silence, to chatter and busy.
Life can change in the blink of an eye. The weirdness, that recognition, that life continues around us.
The normality. The everyday. People just keeping moving and doing. Ticking boxes and completing tasks.
Earth shattering moments define us, and yet, from the inside, looking out, no-one seems to know. Or notice. What giant obstacles we are facing or the loss we have felt.
A river. Just flowing. Constantly, with a direction that is provided for it.
Onwards.
We are all mere water within a river, it seems. Particles. Travelling together somehow.
Jenna x
#JennaMartinLeitchWriter
#RiverTay
#flowriverflow
Courgette in bloom 💛
I keep seeking out the tiny joys. Noticing incidental lovely things, amongst my days.
Today, this flower, which was already present, yet unopened, bloomed in full. The day was sunny, and the yellow centre shone bright. Pollen in plenty.
Next to it, our brussel sprouts ravaged by ravenous caterpillars of both small and large cabbage white. Skeletal stems stripped of leaves. A feast for the taking.
The circle of life played out. Eggs laid on leaves in previous weeks by dancing butterflies. The world continues.
Keeping things close, and small, helps us make space to work through life’s tragedies. The losses of loved ones, and the sad days mixed in. We break, and we never quite mend… we are changed.
I’ll wait for the butterflies, which are sure to appear, in due course. As they do. Metamorphosis.
Earlier on in the day, once full sun had departed, I noted the petals had now closed. The yellows still there in the meantime. Evident and shining for us all.
A flower opens. A flower closes.
Beauty in the everyday.
#JOYimprinted
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
Canary Shouldered Thorn Moth 💛✨
Still trying to get over how beautifully sunny this little lunar soul was!
Have seen three of these little wonders this week.
A blessed few days in Glen Lyon. Surrounded by quiet, and nature, hills and a sense of peacefulness that was all too short lived.
One day I will have a moth light trap of my very own, so grateful of the lend of this one from the lovely owners of the cottage we stayed in.
Magical.
#moth
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#inspiredbynature
#glenlyon
#miltoneonan
My August Journal can be read now, over on my website, www.jennamartinleitch.co.uk
A space I created as a place you can go, a place of solace, of space to rest, and retreat. Into a wordy and worldly quietness.
Writing words form part of my personal toolkit. A survival kit of sorts, these writings serve as to settle my ideas, and form them into small collections, that help me feel my way through the year. You hopefully also. That has always been my hope.
This months words, are of travel, and of our world and it’s increasing temperatures. The worry this has set in my bones, and the ways I know my Dad would respond, in small actions.
The small actions I try to implement in my own days now also.
Click the link to have a read. There are many now, journals from many months, and I would love if you would take the time to read them at slow pace, in quiet corner, or shade within your own garden or nature space.
Jen x
#JOYimprinted
#JennaMartinLeitchWriter
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#scottishartistandwriter
#wordstosoothethesoul
Lighthouse Day
🤍
#lighthouseday
#mydad
#lighthouseofwords
🍂
The sunshine yellows of Summer are beginning to turn to the burnt orange hues of Autumn.
With the summer holidays quietly resting in our days, we have been enjoying a slower pace. Writing, walking, noting down ideas for what I am going to paint next.
Sorting feathers. All the ones I’ve found this year. The prettiest ones, and the ones that will sit beautifully together.
Currently sat clustered in a stoneware jug. Each one is a moment. A finding on my way, within the last 7 months.
Paths, upon banks and kerb sides, wedged into the cracks of paving stones, hanging on threads of grasses. Woven.
Cups of coffee and words help me plan and ponder. It’s a restful phase, and a rest we have needed. Each of us.
💛
#thecolourschange
#JOYimprinted
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
Delicate steps across sunshine to ground. Moving through life, with gentle acceptance. Of where I am, where I hope to go.
Shadows cast, of our shape, of where we are, with sun to our faces. Lit up.
Our cats remind us to slow down. Enjoy the good stuff in life. Rest into our days. Find sunshine.
Explore. Watch from distance. Take it all in.
Some cats are home bodies. Some cats are explorers. I think l, if I were a cat, I would be a bit of both.
Glad of that. Glad of my cats. Glad to know who I am, and also be reminded of it.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon to evening at @forgan_arts_centre for their Lughnasadh festival. It was amazing, music, art, and friends. So many friends in fact, that it brought me back to me. Who I am, and also, who I was. Full circle.
Gentle reminder, in gentle hours.
I loved it.
#JOYimprinted
#bemorecat
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
🧡
A n L ù n a s t a l
A u g u s t
August is here. I feel it has come around fast, and here it is.
The summer feels to be fading slightly, warmer tones trickling in to hedgerow and trees. Brambles I saw for the first time this morning. A run bright and early, as is my way.
August brings birthdays and music. A few nights to a favourite place. A new school year for my children. Promise. Hope. Possibilities.
The turning of a leaf within the year. Each month is a way to take different steps forward. Sculpt a path true to us, and see how the light changes for us, within, when we do.
Ever onwards. I hope for tiny joys aplenty.
Jen x
#JOYimprinted
#scottishgaelic
#AnLunastal
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#augustishere
🐌
t h e s l o w w a y s
Pretty as a picture, a garden snail as if framed, greeted me this morning!
Early to step into the day. Just as this little soul was also. Single footed. Entirely.
Today I have thought of time. Of our feelings of what we must do, and be. Time frames… What truly matters? The slow ways… which I have written of before.
As I have grown older, and some may say, wiser also, I have realized that the goal is not to run away from life, but to come back to yourself.
Quiet shifts. Within. Without…
This conscious choice that something does not, in fact, NEED to be done today.
That tomorrow exists, and priorities can change. Unfixed, we can move more freely somehow.
That shift to a feeling of hoping for more, yet also needing less. In such different ways. That what our ‘more’ stands for, shifts.
Where my role as a daughter has changed. No longer required to care, be present, help. Still feeling the love, that pull and the need to complete the tasks I must. A daughter. The resonance of this title, changes in loss. You are you, still a daughter… but as if that is a mere memory now. The status of being so passed when they did also. You are now head of home, of family; in unison, for me, with my husband.
The world is carried by us, but the free fall of choice, of mid life, means knowing what truly matters, means the way and the why is clearer and its true weight is how we feel inside.
Slowly, and with resilient passage, we continue. Moving onwards.
A trail left in our wake, of what went before, and who we once were.
~ Jenna
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#JennaMartinLeitchWriter
#theslowways
#snail
✨
On our holiday we went out on a small boat, into the big wide ocean. It was a calm, flat sea. Ripples gentle and hypnotic. We sat upon bow, or by boat port, starboard, hoping.
My little family of four. It was magical.
The boat owner said that this is the most still the sea had been, that visibility was perfect. That we were so lucky, which I realised anyway, when these dolphins chose to ride upon the bow as we sailed slowly.
I can’t actually believed they were right there. That they were within eyeball’s distance. That we could hear them chatter.
My Dad would have loved it. I said as much to Chris, our girls.
So much of my Dad I felt, I could connect to moreso, whilst at sea. His reason and his love for it.
I’d not been on a boat in so long. The last time, on the Mersey Ferry, in 2023, but the sea was choppy that day, and the channel so different to where we sailed in Devon.
A memory I’ll never forget.
Magical.
#JOYimprinted
#lostatseawhilstsafeondryland
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
✨
Across cultures and times of now and past, many have seen moths as symbols of both positivity and to represent transformation.
Fittingly, often seen as the souls of our loved ones departed, they remind me, and I believe all of us, to try and navigate the darker times in our lives.
Light seekers, they search out the light that continues to shine, and so must we.
At recent events I had a bunting with these moth designs as a prototype for a future product. It got so many comments and exclamations, that I know it’s next on my list as a ‘something new’ to have within my range of #JOYimprinted products.
I will be working away quietly in my studio over the coming weeks, with work to show you at @centralfifeartistscollective next open studios event in early September, and further into the year.
#moths
#JennaMartinLeitchArtist
#makingspacesothelightcangetin
📸 @jillyjillystudio
