Soulful Expressions: Open Hearts
- Cindy Watson
- Jul 16
- 3 min read
Jessica Taylor: The Art of Wholeness
It takes a certain amount of courage and resilience to invite strangers into your studio, allowing them to scrutinise your deeply personal creative work. Sometimes finding the right mentor helps give you both the push and support that you need, and Jessica Taylor happily found her mentor in Dee Constable who embodies the MHOS motto of Building connections through art and creative spaces in the hills.
After painting for only a few years, Jessica began to think about adding her Glen Forrest studio to the Art Trail roster. Visiting lots of venues in 2025, she screwed up her courage and took the plunge, declaring 2026 the year to step up, call herself an artist and welcome visitors into her tranquil home.
Jessica's art evolves from her work as a Body Talk Therapist and Sound Healer and relies on a willingness to let go of attachment to a particular outcome, trusting that her intuition will lead her to a place of deeper understanding, and often being surprised at the finished result. This reminds me of Sean McNiff's work Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go, which suggests that the primary force of creation- music, dance, art, literature- helps guide us through difficult situations and life transitions.
Jessica embraces the possibility of healing through creativity, and her Becoming Her series explores a sense of rediscovery of Self, and as she tends "to paint more out of a place of joy" her work is uplifting and bright.
For Jessica the artistic process starts with body work, grounding, openness and maybe some music and movement. Then it's getting colour onto the canvas- bright and bold, with a predominance of gorgeous blues and oranges and pops of neon. After the first layer is on the canvas, Jessica finds areas of shape and movement then amplifies them, working through more layers, building on the shapes, adding pattern, alternating between cool and warm colours until the work reveals itself.
Jessica will also be hosting another artist- Margaret Fox- in October, but in the meantime if you want to check out her work please follow the links:
Margaret Fox
After a long career in Education Margaret Fox decided to deepen both her enjoyment and knowledge of art by "trying everything". She followed her own teaching motto of putting clever brains and fingers to use in creative ways, and has gleefully jumped into exploring all facets of the artistic landscape: pencil, watercolour, acrylics, inks, needle-felting and many other mediums have been at the centre of a prolific process of fun and experimentation.
Kickstarting her expressive journey in 2019, Margaret enrolled in the Albany Summer School with Andy Dolphin, and hasn't stopped since! She has been an assiduous student, gleaning knowledge from a diverse range of tutors and filling numerous art journals with experiments in colour, shape and pattern, becoming especially interested in Zen tangles with watercolours and inks.
Taking inspiration from the natural world, especially native birds and flowers, Margaret explores organic structures, light and colour, in layered mixed media works, many of which she has framed and ready to go.
When I asked why she had decided to be part of the Art Trail this year, Margaret replied that she had gained the confidence due to having received favourable feedback from local shows such as Toodyay, Gidgegannup as well as the Avon Valley Arts Society, and was entering MHOS 2026 with an "open heart" and spirit of adventure. Meeting Jessica Taylor was fortuitous as it also enabled her to be part of the action closer to the main trail.
For more of Margaret's work, please follow the link:
The creative connections formed throughout the local arts community are an invaluable part of the whole experience, and as we welcome Margaret Fox and Jessica Taylor into MHOS 2026, I would like to express my gratitude for the lovely people I've been privileged to meet over the last two years.
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