A Willing Winter

Catherine Holtzhausen’s A Willing Winter invites us into the quiet beauty that emerges when life slows, dims, and gently asks us to rest. This series follows the long labyrinth of healing. Moving from survival and yearning into a season of stillness. Where gentle transformation happens not through sweat and struggle but through surrender. 

Inspired by the Erica hirtiflora Curtis, a South African shrub that bursts into bloom in the depths of winter. The work embraces this paradox of winter: that vivid colours can rise from grey, that birds still find their way back to quiet hills and that some things bloom only in the dark. These landscapes of dry grasses, muted skies, and tender silhouettes hold both the ache of absence and the promise of perseverance.

Grief threads quietly through the series. Not as an adversary, but rather a companion. It lives in the shadows of tall grass, in memories carried by the wind, in silhouettes that linger where warmth once was. It is a grief for loved ones, for childhood, for past selves, and for what we have yet to lose. Yet even here, small glimmers persist.

A Willing Winter is an ode to the hidden labour of the soul and a reminder that rest is not emptiness but foundation. To remain behind allows space for healing and the honour of tending what endures. That life continues its secret work even when the world appears barren. There are roots that only deepen beneath cold soil, memories that only soften with time. It is a gentle reminder that winter is not an ending, but a necessary phase of becoming.

That some things bloom only in the dark.