Invisible (Recent Work)
This is a series that that centers on my experience as a mother. I am particularly interested in the seemingly rarefied spaces motherhood occupies in the digital age. In the weeks, months, and now years following my lurching tumble into motherhood, I became fascinated by the countless social-media stories detailing the feelings of invisibility experienced by mothers of my generation. I found myself reflected in these stories, as I desperately sought the frail camaraderie of shared experiences disseminated online.
One of the tropes of contemporary motherhood is that, even in the age of endless photographs, Mom is rarely in the picture. Typically, she is the invisible documentarian of family life, working to create artifacts for her children, friends, family, and of course, followers. Predictably, I too have fallen into this habit. Here are the children that I grew inside my body. See how they have been clothed, fed, and loved. Here are my children’s birthday parties. See them thrilled at the cake, their friends, and the thematic décor. Look too, at the images of my children with their father, their extended family, and their dog. My presence in these images is rarely overt, but is always implied.
These paintings and drawings are the relics that both prove my existence, and describe it. They are the small, otherwise forgettable moments that consume and compose my days. I cull images from the millions of snapshots of the uneventful events that make up the disquieting monotony of my suburban motherhood. A messy living room; a half-eaten meal; my children discovering earthworms in a puddle; the trees of my neighborhood’s tiny suburban forests. These scenes are made mine not by my presence in them, but by my noticing.
The paintings are acrylic on burlap. Painting on the rough burlap demands a physicality – like fighting the surface to force it to accept the paint. The paintbrush must be pressed and dragged, or twisted against the coarse fibers in order for the resistant burlap to grip the color. The drawings are made with a similar intensity. Even in images of elaborate floral arrangements, there are few delicate marks. The pigment (from water soluble crayons, or colored pencils) is pressed hard into the paper, imposing the color onto the already overworked surface. I work quickly, moved by the urgency of the nagging specter of interruption by my domestic responsibilities. Working in this way imbues the work with an aggression that contrasts the otherwise benign snapshots of domestic life. These images of innocuous, often overlooked moments bristle with color and textural agitation, demanding to be seen.