Invisible
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. Recently, I have been making paintings of food. The source imagery is snapshots of meals I’ve made for my family. In most of the paintings, the food is shown already consumed, or otherwise handled. The cook is never shown. The only evidence of her existence is in the preparation, or in the remnants of the nourishment she has provided: a half-eaten trout, birthday pancakes staggered in a tenuous stack, the table scraps left behind after a feast.
Most of the paintings are in bold, acrylic colors on stretched, unprimed burlap. Painting on the rough burlap demands a physicality – almost like fighting the surface to force it to accept the paint. The paintbrush must be pressed and dragged or twisted against the burlap’s coarse fibers. The drawings are made with a similar aggression. 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, forcing the overworked, sometimes resistant surface to accept the color. I work quickly, with the perpetually rushed energy that comes from 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.