Translating Anxiety into Art: Inspiration and Resonance (Part 5)
Foraging for Inspiration
When I was accepted into my first art exhibition in 2021 and asked to create a body of work that reflected on the parallels between my identities as an artist and mother, I didn’t know where to start. My earliest attempts, paintings of Oliver that still hang in our home, were lovely, but too bright, pretty, and clean to capture my own experiences.
Foraging for inspiration, I leafed through newborn and ultrasound photos. I contacted the hospital to request the echocardiogram images taken before Oliver was admitted to the NICU, but I still can’t bring myself to open the envelope they sent.
After several uninspiring weeks, I set aside my paints and pulled out a box of charcoal sticks I hadn’t touched since college. In the pages of a discount sketchbook, abstracted forms began taking shape. When I transitioned back to my painting desk, the guilt, anxiety, and fear I’d carried for so long stared back at me, translated into gritty black strokes, stark against the white of the paper like nothing I’d ever painted before.
Over the next several months, I worked, in therapy and in my studio. Some pieces came to me quickly and intuitively, others I labored over for weeks, fussing over details and waiting for next steps to reveal themselves.
Resonance and Healing
It took 373 weeks after I became pregnant for my Postpartum Collection to come to fruition.
While confronting my traumas through the creation of this series was therapeutic in many ways, the sharing of this work has brought about the most resonance and healing. Like many birthgivers, my journey has been a quiet one, traveled in isolation; but artwork has the innate ability to connect the artist and the viewer, validating both our experiences - even if we never meet.
Click below to view The Postpartum Collection and access perinatal health resources.
Thanks for reading! Click below to view The Postpartum Collection and access perinatal health resources.
Exciting Announcement!
I recently contributed to this art journal for mothers and birthing people! If you have children, know folks with kids, or work with mothers and birthing people, this project is definitely worth checking out.
About the Books
Entwined is an anthology that weaves together stories of creativity and motherhood. This is a grassroots project including 55 mothers who are painters, writers, potters, visual artists, musicians, poets, and multipassionates. The purpose of this project is to inspire mothers to pursue creativity in their own way.
Ember is an art journal companion. A variety of creative prompts (writing, observation, ideating, dreaming, and making) curated to help mothers to kindle their creative sparks.
You can support the project by preordering, donating a copy, or sharing on social media.
The Postpartum Collection: Translating Anxiety into Art was originally published on June 25, 2024 in the Moms Mental Health Initiative Stories of Hope blog.
