Watching Them Grow. Watercolour Series: A Tribute to My Motherhood

Have you heard the phrase that women are expected to raise kids as if they have no job, to work as if they have no kids, and to look like they have neither? It sounds absurd, yet for many years I tried my best to fit into that impossible standard. Sometimes it even "worked", but the price for my mental health and wellbeing was extremely high.

For a long time in my creative career, I pretended I had no children. I mean I didn't keep them secret, just behaved as if I were capable of working as usual. I reviewed my Skillshare students' projects the day after giving birth to my second child. On the photo below my son is three months old, and I am illustrating a book for an American publisher - a dream project with a tight deadline and good money. I drew it literally with one hand at a time, because my baby would only sleep on my arms, so I kept swapping my left and right hands while continuing to work.

I have many similar stories.

But during my immigration, which is obviously an extremely stressful experience, I started to feel that something was wrong with this lifestyle and with these unrealistic expectations. I felt, and I still feel, a huge pressure: from myself, from people around me, from society. I am expected to fit into a model of productivity in my career that is the same for parents and for people without any caregiving responsibilities. Mothers have to compete on exactly the same terms as people without children. I believe this side of motherhood versus professional realisation is still very underseen and undervalued, not only in the art world but in general.

At some point I decided to place my motherhood at the very centre of my practice, at least for a while, to have an opportunity to speak about it. I’m an artist, I am also a mum, and this shapes my time, my emotions, and the way I see the world.

In this series I try to convey the feeling of childhood, which is very complex. Children feel and see life differently from us, adults. Their world is brighter, a bit surreal, full of fantasy, but also full of very strong and sometimes difficult emotions, including fears. It is not as simple and carefree as it might look from the outside. I look at my kids very attentively and try to be a good listener, to notice these inner worlds and to translate them into images. Children grow so quickly, change so fast, and they are so unique, that I feel an even stronger desire to capture these beautiful, complex moments before they grow up and separate from me.

I work in a very loose way. I paint without a preliminary pencil drawing. I apply wet watercolour on wet paper, use a lot of water, and let the paint run, mix, and spread quite freely. I rely heavily on intuition and allow myself to play while I paint. For me, this process mirrors my parenting experience in some way. Both when I paint with watercolour and when I am being a mum, I need to constantly keep the balance between control and freedom. I find it very profound.

This new watercolour series is a tribute to my motherhood as an essential part of my life that I no longer want to keep silent about. I am an artist, and a mum of two. It is a rather challenging combination, but it is real and worth being seen.