Good-bye 2025

It is my randomly assigned honor to close out this calendar year for Muddy Colors and I would like to look back on some works which caught my eye in 2025. This is not a “years best” or in any way claiming to be a complete survey of the field. These are merely a selection of pieces that were made or released this year, so far as I can tell, which I felt deserve a little extra kudos.

Before getting to the images, one very obvious issue kept hitting me in the face as I pulled this post together: social media is broken.

I suppose it would not be a “good-bye 2025” post without taking some time to thrown my hands up in despair, so I’ll take just a moment to elaborate. Trying to find recent works from folks or determine if a piece was new or a repost was instructive in just how fractured, opaque, abandoned, and generally unpleasant self promotion has become for artists. Myself very much included. To say this is “very obvious” even feels like an understatement, but it felt worth calling out all the same. Many years ago, I took a job as an art director and learned a lot about the things that I myself was doing wrong when promoting. Being in the position to hire or survey the work of others calls sharp attention to, among other things, when somebody hasn’t posted any new work in a year or neglects to include basic information in a “help me help you” kind of way. This is a good reminder to me that nobody knows what we’re working on if we don’t share it. My “likes” on Instagram might be literally 10% or less of what they once were, but that doesn’t mean I should be neglecting to show current work for those actively seeking it out. I encourage others to keep this in mind as well. How artists stay visible as the internet continues to enshitify is something I’ll be thinking about a lot more going into ’26.

That out of the way, here are my 2025 spotlights:

Serena Malyon