Art and parenthood..
My experience of continuing my practice since becoming a parent has been opposite to that which I was socially conditioned to expect. I feel much more driven and focused than before – now I know why we need our multi-tasking skills..
I feel more committed yet less attached to ‘success’ as having a child brings an enormous perspective to everything else I do. I have never had so much funding or opportunity to make my work come my way as since I first got pregnant. This may be simply my time-arc as an artist but it could be the new emotional energy children bring or the sleep-deprived lateral thinking that seems to manifest the ideas I need within this new expanded sense of who I am as an artist and mother in the world.
I worked hard to give up feelings of guilt about being away when my son was so little (I started Crafting Space when he was 7 months old). To me it was very clear that the opportunity to make my work through this commission was connected to the birth of my son – that both he and my daughter have somehow brought me the drive to be play out my part in the world in a fuller way. The fact that my mother died suddenly just after Delia was born, is also connected to this – a strong sense of the finite nature of my life here and a deeper sense of my creative purpose.
Drawing on my life experiences to make work (The Loom project, Mother to Mother) has meant that there has been a connection and mutual resource –sharing between the two sides of my life.
Having said all this, I am in the fortunate position of having a partner who is also a creative and understands where I need to go with my work. He is a ‘natural born parent’ – so when I have been away for several nights installing work it hasn’t been the huge issue it might be.
The intense adrenalin state I get into when I am on a project deadline is not, I realize, always compatible with being around my children (Delia, 4 and Moses, 18 months) and my partner often prefers it when I stay away completely rather than come home and am still obsessing….
One thing I had as a child was the example of my mother as a working creative person. I think my daughter Delia seeing me as a fulfilled creative person helps her to grow up with a more comprehensive image of what a woman can be as well as respect the fact that I have a need for personal space which I must meet in order to be a balanced human being.
