Artist/Mother. Mother/Artist.
These are my two primary jobs. I often feel like both these things and neither at the same time. I often feel split in two. And I regularly feel like I am doing neither job particularly well.
This year has been hard enough without the extra layer of a pandemic and a long lockdown.
I had an incident at the grocery store last week where I dropped all my glass jars I was refilling. They smashed all over the floor and made a right mess. The whole thing got me talking to the lady in the shop and another customer about how hard parenting is right now, how we are doing all of the things, all of the time with very little downtime and it’s exhausting. We are not meant to parent like this, and we aren’t meant to work like this.
Motherhood is hard enough on a regular day let alone in the middle on a pandemic. I’m missing the way life used to be, and I think we are all sort of collectively grieving that.
My little studio assistant is basically becoming my creative director these days. Sometimes mum-life/artist-life is so glamorous I can’t even deal! Lockdown locks out of control, activewear (or is it pyjamas!), ugg boots, a trail of toddler debris…
Studio time isn’t the most relaxing with my little studio assistant around but it’s definitely fun, even when I have to draw trucks 🤣 plus we have been doing all sorts of creative activities and tying them into the adventures we go on - painting outside, painting rocks, creating some characters to add to Spoonville, finding the hidden
Sitting with this quote during this lockdown:
“the only thing you can truly control is you - and your reaction to what the world throws at you.”
- Patrick M. Regan
