Hello friends! It has been a minute.
It’s been about 5 months actually.
And I now have a 5 month old baby girl, Margo.
As an art project, growing a baby is very unlike any other art form. You work very had for nine months but having no idea what the final product will look like - like a very long “blind drawing” - a common warm up exercise artists use to loosen their hand and get ready for the real project - in this case raising a child.
And turns out after nine months, I just created my husband’s little mini me.
As anyone will tell you, the early days of parenthood are a joyous, but sleep deprived, blur. They will also tell you that you will have “no time” for pretty much anything. As I alluded to in the title - there is baby care, self-care, and creative pursuits, and you can pretty much pick two of the three. I would like to say that I am such a committed artist that painting IS self care - that it feeds my soul - but there have been more days than I care to admit that around 4 pm I realized I had yet to brush my teeth…
A lot of people have asked what the most surprising thing of having a baby is, for me, it’s been a lot more fun than I was anticipating. I honestly have a lot of fun spending time with her, and being a mom. It’s been a new pace of life, a new routine, and I am slowly learning how to bring my art practice back into my life again.
In the last few weeks I have ventured out baby-less to immerse myself in art once again. A few weeks ago my friend Marina came to visit New York and meet Margo. Marina and I went to the Whitney’s Ruth Asawa Exhibit (it is still on for another month - I highly recommend going!)
Most known for her wire sculptures, the exhibit focusses on Asawa’s drawings. I found the exhibit really inspiring - I would classify the artwork as doodles. Impressive, especially when on display as a collection, but it seemed very familiar to me and not unlike the piles of paper that I have at my home studio. More noteworthy was the fact that she did much of her work at the kitchen table in-between caring for her six children. Somehow Ruth figured out how to pick all three brushes.
I finally picked up a paintbrush myself last week at an evening figure drawing class. I will admit to you - because we are friends - that I have actually never attended a figure drawing class before. This is basic right of passage for an artist that I just never got around to. All the art classes I have taken in the past I have chosen based on my interest in the subject and the technical skill set - linocuts, silkscreen, watercolor, digital art. This class is a two minute walk from my house. As a mom, classes are now selected based on convenience.
I feel incredibly fortunate that I stumbled into this community of artists and that I live in a city so densely packed with artists that I can put my daughter down to sleep and be in an art class minutes later.
As I continue reach for all three brushes I am committing to returning to a regular cadence of these newsletters again. In the next few weeks I will share more about my OTHER new baby - my first published illustrations! In the meantime if you are looking for the perfect present for that special (little) someone in your life, you can purchase Gnomes & Ungnomes: Tales of Hidden Creatures here.