Canvas Meets Motherhood

I'm almost two years into motherhood, two years into what I now understand is Matrescence. My little guy turns two in October, and it's only now that I feel like I have the mental capacity and bandwidth to even conjure a creative thought.

For two years my creativity went somewhere else entirely, into the endless problem solving that motherhood brings. What should he eat? What should I eat? Did I shower? Did I brush my teeth today? Has he pooped today? When is his next nap? Where is my husband? Is he learning enough? How can I make his day fun today? Is he meeting his milestones? What day is it? Am I going to get fired from work? On and on, the questions never stopped. And when I eventually approached the canvas it just felt like more endless questions.

Is this even me anymore? Who was that woman? Is she even here? What do I have to say? Does anybody care? Do I care about this anymore? Is this the best use of my time, shouldn't I shower?

Pausing on my art started before my son even arrived earth side. During an early prenatal appointment, I mentioned offhand that I was an artist. My doctor paused and told me my paints would need to go. It was the fumes, not safe for the baby. I refused that answer and found safe alternatives but they weren't the same. So charcoal became my friend again briefly and I made Becoming and Full with Life. But it didn't really feel the same, something had shifted inside me. Expressing myself creatively through art didn't seem a priority. I was literally in the process of creating a human being, every fiber, every cell knew this was the focus. All of me knew nothing else mattered but the life inside me.

Becoming (drawing on the left); Full with Life (drawing on the right)

So, from the moment I found out I was pregnant, to six months after birth, I did not paint. Nine months of pregnancy, then six more. Fifteen months without the canvas. For someone who had always painted her way through things, it was a longer pause than I knew how to hold. However, I did paint the day I went into labor. But that's another story.

And when my son arrived, I had a little bit of hope I could get back to painting. But my little one and I were inseparable. I was always holding him. To eat, to sleep and while I slept. It was constant. Most days my arms ached from overuse, and when I finally had my hands to myself I didn't want to use them. I just wanted rest. It was so unfamiliar to me. I didn't recognize myself in that feeling, needing rest, longing rest over all the things that brought me joy.

I went back to the canvas around six months postpartum. Still nothing to say, it felt like work but part of me felt like I needed to try, I craved to be her. The woman I was before all of motherhood and pregnancy. And my body, my body was so foreign to me, particularly my pelvic floor (my son had a beautiful 9 inch head and I had a natural birth - my pelvic floor needed extra TLC). That's where Becoming Again came from, a sacral chakra abstract piece made during his nap window. It was Chaotic. Full of energy. Meant to be healing through visualization. I thought maybe I could paint out the tension and pain. And it did give me healing, but not physical. I had a reunion with myself and the woman I once was, it felt like giving a hug to someone you haven't seen in years.

My son with Becoming Again

After Becoming Again, I didn't revisit the canvas for sometime. I wanted to create but again, didn't have the capacity to conjure a creative thought. So I pulled out an old sketch and decided it would be easier to pull from a new thought than to activate an old one. That became The Emotional Compound. It took months, not because it was complex but because of the small windows available to create. I genuinely felt like I had lost it, my love for painting the female form but there was a another quiet reintroduction with this piece. noticed my style changed slightly, my color choices, even my paintbrushes noticed as I gravitated towards new ones instead of my favorites. My hands had changed. My instincts had changed. I have changed and maybe I have something to say.

Brittany and her son with Emotional compound painting

The Emotional Compound

I started thinking of how I could include my son into my work. It was around this time that I found a photograph on Instagram, a mother holding her child. It spoke to me deeply. With the owner's permission to use the photo, I was able to paint everything I wanted to say without using words. I wanted to capture how Motherhood is poetic, challenging, exhausting, incredible and the hardest experience I've ever had to go through. That it does the impossible, crack your heart open with an overflowing of unconditional love, something I've never experienced myself. This painting became Until You Can Hold Yourself, made as a memory of all the holding, all the unconditional love, all the grief.

Through this artwork, it seemed I found something to paint for again. Not the trauma or pain of my past, like I painted previously, but what I was experiencing in real time. Painting through motherhood, Matrescence, through the phases and finding a voice for it.

My most recent piece, Nothing to Hold But Myself, feels like it represents where I am now, the next phase. Less holding, more guiding. More internal looking. More putting me first. Pouring back into me. After her hands and body have been in service of a little someone else, there is nothing left to hold but her own body, her own breath, herself. A mother's rest. It represents freedom to pause, to think, to shift into who I want to be as a mother, artist and human.

I call these paintings and drawings the Matrescence Series . Matrescence is the quiet unraveling a woman moves through in becoming a mother, a transformation as vast as adolescence. This series began as a way to hold what was happening to me as I moved through it, the parts that felt like light, and the parts that felt like grief. This series will continue to hold the paintings and drawings, made along the way.

Brittany Gilliam is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist creating original figurative paintings and charcoal drawings exploring matrescence, the female body, and transformation. All works are one-of-a-kind and available to collect.

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