Noah Kahan

Created May 2026

Inspired by Noah Kahan’s music, specifically his latest album, “The Great Divide,” this piece explores the idea of how there’s beauty in being broken.

I had to paint Noah Kahan himself in his natural element. Capturing that raw folk/indie northern vibe his music carries with his flannel, strumming the guitar, and mountains off in the distance. I used warm monotone colors for the mountains to reflect the nostalgic color scheme of his album cover.

Noah Kahan is such a good songwriter and has so many good lines in his songs that really hit home. I had a hard time narrowing down which lines I wanted to use, so I made a post on Threads asking fans to share their favorite lyrics of his and was overwhelmed by the number of responses. I then proceeded to hand write every single response on to the matboard.

The broken record relates to the audience his album speaks to. People navigating grief, anxiety, loneliness, and emotional hardship. Even though many of his songs are heavy, there is always something beautiful woven into them. He claims he wanted to “start and finish the album with a moment of beauty/peace… and sandwich all the hard stuff in the middle, because that’s the stuff you go through. But at the end and at the beginning there’s always beauty.” That idea became what I wanted to represent within this art piece, the beauty that comes out of the broken.

And finally, to top it off, the little ladybug that ties the whole piece together with it’s glittering trail behind it. Ladybugs happen to be Noah Kahan’s favorite insect. When he got offered his first record deal, his room was infested with ladybugs, and he took that as a sign of good luck. Since ladybugs symbolize positivity, hope, and fresh starts, it felt fitting to include one here as a final reminder that beauty and healing can still exist even after difficult seasons.