Motherhood and Art: A Balancing Act

I am writing this from the trenches of motherhood. I am feeding my two month old twins, a bottle in each hand, actually “writing” this via Google’s Speech-to-Text tool. I’ve been thinking a lot about motherhood and art over the past 3 1/2 years but even more so now that I am a mother of three. When my twins were born, unsurprisingly, things got busier and I am convinced the clock is playing tricks on me as time slips away without me realizing. And honestly? I am struggling with being both a Mother and an Artist.

One piece of advice that my older sister gave me when I first became a mom was that she had abandoned the idea of a balance because it left her with the expectation that both roles would be equal, that they would each get the same amount of time and attention in her day to day life. This left her feeling disappointed on the days when her job as a mom inevitably took most of her time and energy, as it so often does, and left her feeling guilty on the days that she dedicated to her creative work. With that in mind, when I became a mom, I shifted my mindset away from “balance” and towards and overall happiness and fulfillment. Gratitude and trying to remain present really help me to stay rooted in both roles.

This does not mean that I have been without challenges! I have had many moments of frustration attempting to accomplish tasks in the studio while tiny hands were scattering paintbrushes and tubes of paint across the floor, thinking to myself “it is going to take me longer to clean this mess up than just to finish this one work task”. I wore my first son in a Baby Bjorn while I took down paintings and loaded my car after a gallery show, all while the gallery owner looked at me like I had lost my marbles. I have packed my art festival booth and all of my paintings around a car seat and found ways to distract a toddler and ensure his safety while setting up said art festival booth. Looking back at all of these things, I feel proud that so far I’ve been able to find a way to make these things work, even though it was a little (or sometimes a lot) messy.

Something I don’t believe in altering, though, is my feelings surrounding the changes in my life when motherhood takes over. Shortly after my first son was born, I remember crying right after declaring to my husband that I was going to take some time to paint. Looking back, a portion of that emotion was definitely due to a lack of sleep and hormones, if not undiagnosed postpartum depression (I was officially diagnosed just before his first birthday), but part of it was an emotion that nobody really talks about when you are blessed to bring a healthy baby into the world or your family: grief. A part of me was grieving the pre-baby life that had abruptly ended, since I no longer had the freedom to paint alone in my studio, uninterrupted for hours. Of course before he was born I knew that my life would change drastically and that sacrificing some work time would be necessary. Living that loss made me realize how vital my creative practice is to my overall well-being. Painting became a form of self care. I also found that it was more and more difficult to do the work related tasks I wasn’t necessarily as passionate about like answering emails and creating social media posts. When I found out that I was pregnant again, with TWO babies, I realized that my time was going to dwindle even more severely.

Unfortunately, I am not a cape-wearing Artist/Mother superhero, here to tell you that I have it all figured out and I have found a way to juggle all of my varying tasks and roles. After all, I still wipe tiny poopy diaper-wearing bums more often I pick up a paintbrush. Yet, I am also not feeling like a part of me is “lost”, as if the artist in me has died. Instead, I am choosing to find ways to restructure my life a bit so that I can enjoy all of my roles and be present in each of them when I need to be. As I tell my 3 1/2 year old often, I am just one Mama with only two hands. I can only do so much. It is hard to ask for help, even when you are lucky enough to have people in your life who are willing to be there for you or you can afford to hire them. But that’s where I am. I need help. I don’t have to do it all, nor do I want to. Parenting takes a village. Many contemporary artists have teams of capable people working for them. I am looking for help because running myself ragged by going it alone and wearing my burnout like a badge of honor won’t make me happy or successful, and it won’t for you either.