Categories
Twitter: what can I say? Inane and pointless like everyone else’s.
- @chirpingnorton Hah yes, I'm getting pretty good at plotting, too. 17 minutes ago
-
Recent Comments
i wrote this and stuff
read my book
The Internet’s Favourite blue milk Rants
Meta
Archives
This looks like a great film, on a topic that’s true across professions. Whether you’re an Official Artist or a writer or designer in the corporate world, or if you just straight-up love what you do for a living and have ambition, everyone expects you to give it all up – and happily – for children. As women, we face ostracism for making a decision NOT to have children (too selfish for it, of course, and therefore immature and possibly unworthy of love), and also for making the decision to HAVE children while still loving ourselves enough to do what we love above and beyond the joyful tasks of changing diapers and cleaning up spilled milk.
I think a lot about the mother artist. How to do both, and why it is ghettoised. Wouldn’t a market for mothers’ creative work make mothering more visible? Make motherwork /creative work more normal? We need these women, and need for their work to be seen or heard. How to make this work mainstream?
I’ve made a cd of mothering songs (not mine – other artists), which I will be giving my friends for Christmas. I would like to send you a copy, Blue Milk, or, if you are coming to the MIRCI conference at UQ in April, I could give you a copy then.
Thanks for sharing the info re the film – I will definitely see it.
BTW, congratulations for being a Babble Top 12 blogger!!
Catherine, thank you for thinking of me. Yep, am planning on getting to the MIRCI conference – am delivering a paper there. WIll look forward to seeing you.
So I put myself to the challenge. Can I name 5 female artists not named in this trailer, off the top of my head?
Turns out I can, though a random bunch. Then I looked them up to see if any had children.
Judy Chicago (don’t think so)
Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun (yes)
Lee Krasner (don’t think so)
Faith Ringgold (yes)
Jane Freilicher (no idea)
What troubled me was (1) how much I had to think think think to come up with these names and (2) the fact that there were a few artists whose work I could think of, but whose names I could not recall, such as Artemisia Gentileschi. Their names aren’t hammered into my mind like Leonardo Michelangelo Raphael Titian and blah blah blah through all of art history.
I definitely want to see this film. Not sure whether or not I want to see it with my artist husband, though.
WOW!! Great subject.
I think there are a number of issues tangled up here which possibly don’t have room to be un-teased here.
Artists and mothers don’t generate much income (if at all) from what they produce. To do both is viewed as irresponsible.
The only artists I can think of who can happily mother and practice their art are actors – actors who make buckets of money for TV/film work, which also happens to be seasonal work, making it easier for them to be away from their family for intensive but short periods of time. Olga Masters was a great Australian writer – she is a great example of a mother (of many, 8 children I think?) who waited until her children were grown up to create.
I think to create art and be a mother is to be subversive. We work outside this financial system – yes, we are invisible to many, but this gives us a unique perspective on the world. I have never felt more free to create and write than when I became a mother. Its not easy to juggle everything, it requires constant adjustment, bending, switching. And sometimes everything falls in a heap.
My husband provides for me, and while we may look like the picture of Mr and Mrs Whitebread, when my children are asleep, I write, I draw, I create. I feel like motherhood has enabled my emerging creativity, fostered it, nurtured it, because through learning to nurture other people, I have learnt to nurture myself. I don’t know if I will ever generate income from what I produce, but I am producing and it makes me feel alive. The key for me is that my husband supports my creative endeavours.
Furthermore, art is play. Play is fertile ground for ideas, loosens up your muscles for artistic practice. Great ideas come from the mess of my life at home with 3 pre-schoolers.
That’s so inspiring to hear. I saw this movie and it touched and saddened me in a lot of ways, as a woman who’s an artist and scared about becoming a mother someday.
thank you so so much for this link!
I am an painter/writer/crafter/singer/seamstress/actor *and* a stay at home mother, and frankly it’d be easier to be all of the former if I weren’t the latter based on time, social constrants, and stretched finances, amongst other factors.
I’ve been encouraged to give up my art and have another child, or to just put the one child in daycare and concentrate on my art. Never both.