Self-Guided Reflection Tour - Galerie De Ploegh

Welcome, and thank you for being here. I'm Cath Duncan, the artist behind these works — you're welcome to read more about my journey from grief therapist to artist.

Whether you’re viewing our Nieuwe Stemmen exhibition in person or joining us online from your home, this Self-guided Reflection Tour is an invitation to spend time with my artworks, noticing what stirs, settles, or surprises you. Not as something to analyze or get “right,” but as something already meaningful in your own life.

These works grew out of my own ongoing relationship with uncertainty - the vulnerable and often scary parts of life we can't control, predict, or fully understand. This tour is an invitation to explore your relationship with uncertainty too, through these images: not to resolve it, or figure it out, but simply to notice what it stirs in you.

Suggestions for walking the tour

You’re invited to begin with the artwork itself. Spend a little time looking before reading anything. Notice what draws your attention, what you sense in your body, and what memories, images, or feelings quietly appear.

Afterward, you can read the artwork’s story and the accompanying reflective questions. These questions are not instructions or tests. They are gentle openings. You don’t need to answer all the questions - or any of them. Holding a question can open curiosity, sensitivity, imagination, and care - and that matters more than the answers to the questions.

You’re welcome to jot down some notes of your reflections - though nothing needs to be written or remembered unless you want it to be.

There’s no need to complete the whole tour in one visit. You’re welcome to pause, wander, skip ahead, return later, or come back on another day.

Above all, enjoy it and trust yourself. There is no right pace, no right response, and no right outcome. Whatever you notice - or don’t - is already part of your way of belonging here.

Before you begin the tour, you might like to take a moment to arrive - noticing your breath, your feet on the ground, the simple fact of being here. And when you’re ready, go ahead and begin…

Begin the Reflection Tour…

Mysteries, Yes (2026). Mixed media on canvas. 70 × 50 cm. €750

Soft fields of sage, grey, and cream open into a landscape that feels both seen and unseen - hovering between form and atmosphere. Light moves through it in quiet pulses of apricot glow, like small revelations that do not insist on explanation.

Inspired by the spirit of Mary Oliver’s poem, Mysteries, Yes, this work reflects on the ease of not needing to understand everything. Scientific language may describe the world in detail, yet there is another way of meeting it - with openness, wonder, and trust in what cannot be fully named. It is a space for attention without certainty, for being held by mystery, and for allowing awe to arise simply from looking, and noticing, and responding with quiet joy.

Take a moment to read Mary Oliver’s poem before reflecting on the questions.

Can you recall a time when not knowing turned out to be a doorway rather than a dead end? What did staying with the mystery teach you, that rushing to explain it wouldn't have?
Where in your life right now is uncertainty asking you to trust, rather than to understand? What would it look like to give that trust a little more room?

A Falcon, a Storm, or a Great Song? (2026). Mixed media on canvas. 100 × 120 cm. €2300

Warm ochres stretch wide beneath a cobalt sky, the horizon loosened rather than fixed. Dark, bird-like gestures rise from a tangle of blue brushstrokes and find lift on unseen currents. The artwork takes its name from the final line in Rilke’s poe poem, Widening Circles - a poem that invites us to trust what the birds already know - that you don't need to know what you are, or where the circle ends, to give yourself to it. To live expansively is not to arrive at certainty, but to find, again and again, that there is always a current that will hold you up.

Take a moment to read Rilke’s poem before reflecting on the questions below.

Think of a time you gave yourself fully to something without knowing exactly where it would lead. Looking back, what did that experience teach you about who you are?
What's a "current" in your life right now that you sense might hold you up, if you let it — even though you can't yet see where it goes?

The Sun’s Birthday (2026). Mixed media on canvas. 70 × 50 cm. €750

Light returns in fresh greens and yellows, the colors of new leaves and open sky. Wild foliage lifts into brightness, carrying the simple joy of sunlight, air, and movement. The painting holds the feeling of a world beginning again.

Echoing the spirit of ee cummings’ poem, i thank you God for most this amazing, this work celebrates the astonishment of being alive in the present moment - the sensory delight of color, light, and growth, and a quiet gratitude and hope that life continues to unfold toward the light.

Take a moment to read ee cummings’ poembefore reflecting on the questions below.

Even with things that feel hard or unresolved right now, what still manages to unfold toward light for you? How do you notice it, or make room for it?
When did you last let yourself be delighted by something ordinary? What made that delight possible, and how might you invite more of it in?

The Sweetness Between Us (2026). Mixed media on canvas. 60 × 70 cm. €895

Soft lavenders hold sage greens in gentle suspension, while ripe peach forms glow, dart, and hover like fireflies in a twilight forest. Nothing here strains upward alone; everything moves in relation to something else, held in a kind of shared buoyancy - balanced, abundant, and beautiful. This work is a vision of paradise - not as solitary abundance, but as vitality built together. Peach speaks of wellness and sweetness, goodwill passed hand to hand. Life flourishes not through force but through connection: roots reaching toward roots, generosity meeting generosity, one living thing lending its light to the next.

Who are the relationships that have helped hold you up during an uncertain season of your life? How did you let them in, or ask for that support?
If our resilience is connected to the strength of our relationships with others, how might that change the way you think about needing help?

Nothing Is Wasted (2026). Mixed media on canvas. 60 × 70 cm. €895

Beneath a narrow horizon, the ground holds the slow labor of breakdown and becoming: fragments, losses, and buried seasons turning quietly into nourishment. In the dark there is movement - roots searching, matter loosening, life rearranging itself.

This work reflects on the patience required to tend the soil rather than forcing growth, trusting that failure and loss are not wasted. Instead, they become nourishing compost for what comes next.

Is there a loss, a mistake, or a hard chapter that, looking back, quietly became nourishment for what came after? What grew from it, in the end?
What's something in your life right now that feels still "underground" — not yet visible, but perhaps becoming something? What helps you stay patient with it?

Gathering up what you’ve explored

Before you leave, you might like to pause for a final moment - not to do anything, but simply to notice yourself here now.

You’ve spent time with landscapes of uncertainty and delight, belonging, and hope. Some questions may have stirred gently; others may have opened something tender or surprising. Nothing needs to be resolved.

If it feels supportive, you might reflect on one or two of these closing questions - or simply hold them quietly as companions as you return to your day.

What feels most alive in you right now? It could be a feeling, an image, a memory, or a word, or something else.
What has this journey reminded you about your own relationship with uncertainty — what helps you live alongside it, rather than against it?
What feels like it wants gentle tending, as you carry some uncertainty of your own forward? And what support already exists around you for that?

You might also take a moment to acknowledge yourself for being here. Turning toward reflection, imagination, and feeling is an act of courage. Living well with uncertainty does not require answers, performance, or arrival — it grows through attention, honesty, care, and courage.

Thank you for visiting

I hope this exhibition and reflection tour leaves you with something that can take root - an image, a feeling, or a question - that supports the flourishing of creativity, connection, and belonging in your everyday life.

Would you like to live with one of these artworks?

All of the artworks are available to buy. If you’d like to own one of these artworks, you can buy the artwork through Galerie De Ploegh or contact me at cath@cathduncan.com or +31-6-27-97-73-66 (call or whatsapp ). I’ll be happy to meet you at Galerie De Ploegh or schedule a phone or video call.

Want to share this Reflection Tour with someone?

This tour is best experienced at the Nieuwe Stemmen Exhibition at Galerie De Ploegh, Netherlands (showing from 6 September until 11 October2026), where you can see the artworks in- person. You’re welcome to share it with friends or loved ones who can’t visit the exhibition. You can do that by forwarding this page to them.