Canvas Meets Motherhood
- Brittany Gilliam
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
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 girl? 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?
It started before he even arrived. During a prenatal appointment, I mentioned offhand that I was an artist. My doctor paused and told me my paints would need to go, the fumes. I found safe alternatives but they weren't the same. So charcoal became my friend again, briefly. (Becoming, Full with Life) But I was literally in the process of creating a human being. Painting was not a priority.
Becoming (drawing on the left); Full with Life (drawing on the right)
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.
I did paint the day I went into labor. But that's another story.
When he arrived, I was always holding him. To eat, to sleep, to sit up, while I slept. It was non-stop. My arms ached from overuse. 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.
Things got better when he started moving on his own. And when he turned one, no more breastfeeding. Freedom, kind of.
I went back to the canvas around six months postpartum. Still nothing to say, but I needed to try. During this time it felt like my pelvic floor was foreign to me. That's where Becoming Again came from, a sacral chakra abstraction piece made during the nap window. Chaotic. Full of energy. Purple and Gold. Maybe I could paint out the uncomfortambleness in my pelvic area, visualization. Maybe I could invoke healing through it. It did give me healing, a tiny remembering of the artist inside me.
A little further along I felt like it was time to try painting again. 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 I also felt good to be her again, the her I remembered. There was a quiet reintroduction. I think I know you. You seem familiar. But you've changed. Even my paintbrushes noticed. I didn't gravitate toward the same tools. My hands had changed. My instincts had changed.
Around this time I found a photograph on Instagram, a mother holding her child. With her permission, I was able to paint everything I wanted to say but couldn't. Motherhood is poetic, challenging, exhausting, incredible, the hardest experience I've ever had to go through. And it did what I did not know was possible, cracked my heart wide open. That painting became Until You Can Hold Yourself, made as a memory of all the holding, all the love, all the grief.
It seemed I found something to paint for again. Not the trauma or pain of my past, but what I was experiencing in real time. Painting through it, through the phases. Finding a voice for it.
My most recent piece, Nothing to Hold But Myself, feels like it represents where I am now. Less holding. More internal looking. More putting me first. 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. Freedom to pause, to think, to shift into who I want to be.
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.
Comments