In Good Company: Spending the Holidays With Art

For festive hearts and tender ones, a short letter about living with art

The holidays have a way of turning the volume up on everything. For some people that means lights, full tables and a calendar that fills itself; for others it is a quiet apartment, a half-packed suitcase, an empty chair at the table, or a year that didn’t go to plan, and most of us land somewhere in between, grateful, a little tired and a little tender. Through all of it I keep coming back to one question: what does it look like to spend the holidays in the company of art? I don’t mean museum openings so much as the everyday version, the painting you pass with your morning coffee, the vintage portrait above the sofa, the small work on paper taped beside your desk.

When you are in a celebratory mood

If you’re feeling festive this year, art is happy to join in. You might move your most joyful piece into the room where everyone gathers, prop a small painting on the mantel among the candles and cards, or wrap fairy lights around a framed vintage work so that it becomes a guest at the party. Art doesn’t need to be “holiday themed” to take part; a bold abstract, a gentle portrait or a small landscape by an emerging artist all become part of the scene, taking in the conversation and laughter from their hooks and nails.

If you’re hosting, art is a natural ice-breaker. Guests drift toward a piece and ask “Where did you get this?” or “Who is she?”, and suddenly the conversation moves past work and weather to stories, places and the artists whose lives are now woven into your home.

When the holidays feel heavy

Of course, not every December feels like a celebration. Some years the grief is fresh, money is tight, or family feels complicated or far away, and the sparkle of the season only makes that ache sharper. If that is where you are this year, I see you. This is when art stops being decoration and becomes company: somewhere to rest your eyes when your thoughts won’t settle, a witness to long evenings on your own, a reminder that beauty and difficulty can share the same frame.

You might light a candle near a painting that steadies you, sit across from a portrait and let it look back at you, or turn the pages of a book of images slowly, without needing to “understand” any of them. Art doesn’t fix anything, but it can make whatever you are carrying a little easier to sit with, and remind you that someone else has felt this too.

Art as enhancement, art as escape

Art can do two opposite jobs at once. Sometimes it adds to what is already there, leaning into warmth, nostalgia and abundance, echoing the colour and chaos of a crowded living room, or matching the mood of a family recipe, a favourite song or a ritual you repeat every year. At other times it offers a way out, whether that is a surreal miniature that pulls you into a dream, a small seascape above your desk that feels like a window out of the city, or a mysterious figure who seems to be doing your thinking for you. Both are fine, and there is no right way to “use” art over the holidays, so choose work that comforts you, pushes you, distracts you, or simply keeps you company while you do the dishes in the half-dark.

Small, gentle rituals with art

If you’d like art to play a bigger part in your holidays, there are a few small rituals that need no budget and no rehang. You could choose one piece to visit every day, standing in front of it for a minute or two until you find a new detail, a brushstroke or a shift in colour you hadn’t noticed, and let that be your pause for the day. You could write a short note to an artwork you love, whether you own it, saw it in a gallery or found it in a book, about what it gave you this year, be that comfort, courage or the feeling of being understood. You could make a small salon on a shelf or side table, setting a little work by an emerging artist beside a vintage photograph, a postcard and a stone from a walk, so that it becomes a private, changing tribute to the year you’ve had. Or you could share an artist’s work with someone who needs it, sending a link or a postcard not as a shopping tip but simply as “this made me think of you,” because being seen through art is a gift in itself.

How this connects to what we do

Here at Curio we spend our days with work by emerging artists, many of them BIPOC and many self-taught or working outside the usual routes, alongside vintage pieces that have already lived other lives. Underneath it all is a simple belief that everyone deserves to live with art that feels honest and alive, in the bright seasons and in the messy ones too. Our artists are living through their own holidays as well, painting between shifts, shipping work from small studios, and dealing with family, grief, celebration and fatigue like everyone else, so every piece that lands in someone’s home connects those two lives.

As the year ends, I find myself thinking less about trends and more about company, about art for people who are celebrating loudly, art for people keeping things very quiet, and art as a way to feel connected to other lives and other rooms across cities and time zones.

Looking toward the new year

For 2026, my wish for Curio, for our artists and for you is a simple one.

May we keep making and choosing small, true things.
May our walls show who we actually are, not who we think we should be.
May we remember that art belongs in kitchens, bedrooms, hallways and the corners where real life happens.

Whether this season is joyful, complicated or lonely, or some mix of all three, I hope you find at least one artwork that makes you feel less alone, whether it hangs on your own wall, in a friend’s home, at a community space or somewhere on the internet.

In art, we unite; in art, we live.
And I’m grateful to be sharing this patchwork with you.