Being a mother is now a part of my identity. As a mother I feel much conflict between the label of mother- what society perceives that to be, and how I feel as a mother, artist, feminist, etc. The notion of what qualities society thinks makes a ‘good’ mother is problematic and I wonder how the role is performed on a day to day basis. The relationship I am forming with my son is unknown territory yet is taking me on a journey which I am wanting to explore within my art practice.
There’s so much about motherhood that I wish I had known beforehand but nothing quite prepares you for the madness that comes with it. I’m still processing day by day whilst caught up in the wider messiness of day to day life.
Having had such a beautiful journey through pregnancy, I was naïve to think that the birth would be the same.
I was not prepared for the emergency C-Section that was decided and the emotional trauma that it would bring. At that point, my only concern was to get my baby out safely. And then to add to this trauma came breastfeeding. What can I say about breastfeeding? Something so “natural” turned into something mortifying and emotionally and physically draining. The pressure to breastfeed because it was what the baby needed. It also saved the midwives a lot of hassle. It hurt continuously due to my boy being a “lazy latcher”. I just assumed it would come naturally. I tried skin to skin, different positioning, hand expressing to get a good start, shield and no shield but NOTHING! After two weeks of “breastfeeding” and pumping, the time came where I just couldn’t take it anymore and switched to bottle feeding. The relief. I felt this weight lift off my shoulders and how the role could now be shared with my partner.
This journey of motherhood has its highs and lows.
The bond.
The connection.
Body transformations for both of us.
Change is so quick. I can’t keep up.
With every new beginning, something has to end.
Motherhood: I am learning to walk the fine line, balanced between life’s joys and sorrows. Fully feeling. Fully living.
Mother seems mandatory and has its own status in line with life choices, marriage success and size of kitchen. Becoming educated and having a career separate to the domestic, becoming a maker/artist empowered me to my perceived ideal of Woman.
I am a sculpture lecturer.
I am a mother at home.
I am an artist when around my arts community. Or when I am actively creating and thinking like now.
This has been playing on my mind over the last 6-months which is when my son was born. I always knew it would be this strange balance and potential sacrifice that would need to be made by myself as a mother but I have found myself tangled in a web of repetitive actions and day-to-day tasks. I am the mother. I am the source. I have developed this creative anxiety and the limitations that sit alongside becoming a mother; however I have superpower energy to be present for my child.
As I study his development second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, I realise his dependence on me as his mother.
Motherhood is not one-dimensional.
Motherhood is a journey.
Motherhood is an experience.
Motherhood is a daily routine.
The American painter Lee Lozano began recording and documenting everyday events and personal experiences parallel to her painting and would eventually refer to these studies as ‘Pieces’. She discussed how her work became a record of her life, translated into art. She developed a language of her own from workings out of ideas that are all her own but are drawn from the world around her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S3xcoLUltI
My practice has a sense of an autobiographical nature and building on narrative as opposed to abstract.
Looking closely at how motherhood is dictating my life, I have begun to document and record the everyday events and personal experiences of my being as a mother and the relationship I am forming with my son. I will hopefully translate this documentation into an archival body of work in which I wish to embrace as raw material and see it as primary material and not material that should be discarded.
