Go Ahead, Make Something
In the past couple weeks, there has been a shift. Can you feel it? The weather is changing, the days are getting shorter, I heard mercury did something crazy with retrograde? I spoke with five different women, four of them moms, who have felt this shift deeply in their souls. I’ve heard big, brave ideas about art making and creative enterprises, as well as quiet, smoldering notions that maybe there is more to life than simply thinking about being an artist. All of them ask the same question “Do you think I should do this?” And yes, YES I think you should do this. It’s for everyone, anytime. Here’s why….
As an artist, I cannot control when inspiration will strike. The ebbs and flows of creative desire are unpredictable. As a mother, I cannot always fully show up for those flashes of motivation to make art. This morning, for example, my one year old woke up with GREAT fervor a full hour earlier than normal. That caused the first nap to occur on the way home from school drop off, instead of in his crib. My morning art making window was shot, which was unfortunate because I was more than ready to continue tackling an exciting painting. It’s taken a long time for me to not resent the mystery that comes with the territory of being a Mother Artist, and I still struggle with it every day.
But I art on. I have to. It’s become my therapy, my meditation, my solace. I require it to be the person I am meant to be.
Why does this matter? Before I started painting again, I thought about the aforementioned scenario and a million other hypotheticals that made the concept of being a Mother Artist seem impossible. For a long time, I considered them excuses, and we all know how society feels about excuses! I would beat myself up for not being disciplined or motivated enough to do something I enjoy. (Now is a good time to think about how truly fucked up this is…) As it turns out, they weren’t excuses at all. They were legitimate concerns and were actually pretty stressful to navigate. To conquer, they required a lot of big, emotional work. The big ones?
I am not good enough to spend real time making art. If I was good, wouldn’t I have already done this and found “success”?
I’m a mom now and won’t fit in with the “art world”. Ohhhh this one. Perhaps it’s for another post, but identifying as an artist is something I struggled with as far back as art school. I have never felt I look the part, but I also always felt “weird” compared to my non-art friends.
I used to do art, but now I am grown up. I don’t do that anymore. This is more loaded than you would think. From where I stand, art is fun. Fun is not something that adults, especially mothers of young children, have time for. If I had time for fun, then I was doing something wrong.
Time. Never any time. This one barely needs an explanation. Kids, work, family, grocery shopping, sleep, health. There is simply not enough time for something that doesn’t intentionally serve every single person (other than myself, of course) in my life.
I don’t have the materials and I can’t justify investing in them. This one was huge! $100 on basic materials to get going seemed like a ludacris investment at the time. Spending decent money on something that was so uncertain and foreign felt like a massive obstacle.
I am not worthy of being good at something that is so fun, fulfilling, and beautiful. I am not worthy of pursuing joy. This one was less clear to me at the time. Deep down, I didn’t think I deserved to do something just for me. My house was messy all the time. I hated the way my body looked and felt guilty of the food I consumed. I spent money carelessly. I drank more than I was happy to report. I was failing at my job. I carried guilt and shame around with me at the cellular level and it was hard.
For me, it took getting pregnant in the early stages of a global pandemic to see that how I perceived myself was slowly killing me. If I was to sustain the life growing inside me, I needed a more sustainable way to live my own life first. My first thought? I have to start making art again. And I did.
So, what’s my advice?
Do it. And it won’t be magical at first. It might even be painful, sort of like running. You WANT to do it, but you don’t want to do it. Take it slowly until you find a form of consistency that works for you. Throw out ideas like “30 minutes every day” because inevitably there will be a day you can’t do it (especially if you have children!) and there is NO room for feeling bad about finding joy. You will need to get comfortable with forgiving yourself multiple times per day. Eventually art making, like running, will be something you crave. Your body and mind will need it. You will adapt your life to meet the needs of your art making practice, rather than the opposite. I cannot tell you what those adaptations will look like, or what your practice will look like, but I assure you that it will come to you just the way it is supposed to.
And to be clear, this isn’t just for artists. This message is for any creative human who wants to make their big, bold ideas tangible. You want to take the dreamy insides of your head, feel it leave your fingertips, and apply it to something you can see…maybe even share with the world. At the end of the day Mother Art is about tapping into our core, authentic selves and recognizing just how dynamic, worthy and supremely creative we all are.
So go ahead, make something. You can, you should, you must.
