The pieces are finally starting to come together for me. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to say with this project for quite some time. This idea came to me, almost as inspiration one evening last year. It’s been on my heart ever since. I believe mother’s stories have value. I’ve found in my own life that hearing the experiences of other mothers is healing for me. We’re in this together. Many of the thoughts and feelings we experience as we step into motherhood can be surrounded by shame and we tuck them away, never to be shared.
In a book entitled “Ordinary Insanity” by Sarah Menkedick, she writes, “I considered how central grief is to the experience of becoming a mother, and I found that women’s stories–more than therapists, medicine, or other medical interventions–are central to healing mothers, and to remaking and reclaiming motherhood.”
The moment I read this is the moment this all came together for me. This is why I’m so passionate about this project.
For many, creating is an outlet. It’s our therapy. It’s the way we process how we’re feeling. I’ve found this to be true, especially after the birth of my second child. Feelings of sadness and anxiety overcame me and it wasn’t until I picked my camera back up (as well as lots of reading and therapy podcasts ;)) that I started to feel human again.
I hope that through hearing these stories we will feel less alone in our motherhood journey. That we can be inspired and uplifted by these creative mothers who are raising babies, while still trying to stay true to themselves.
Caitlin Connolly is a painter & sculptor whose work explores themes like motherhood, womanhood, spirituality and infertility. After struggling with infertility for 7 years, she gave birth to twin boys in 2017. At the beginning of the pandemic this year, she started creating these collaborative drawings with her sons. I’ve been dying to photograph Caitlin for this project for some time, and I’m so grateful we were able to make it work last month!
“No, I hadn’t physically born children, but I had brought into existence hundreds and hundreds of characters that wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t created them. That changed my heart and I understood my own ability as a nurturer differently after that point. And I think that’s true for everyone, not just me as an artist. What have you created and cared for that wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t cared for it?”
“They (the women in her paintings) feel big, substantial, capable — like they can do things. When I go to museums, I see so many paintings where women’s hands and feet have been painted smaller, I don’t know why…I paint women that can do things with their hands and go places with their feet. It just feels right to me.”
“One thing I have learned through exploring themes of womanhood and motherhood is that having children or not having children is such a central and emotional journey for women. Some women have children when they don’t want to, some women want to have children and they can’t, some women lose their children, some women have children and don’t like being mothers, some women love being mothers — it’s such a personal and unique experience. I feel very grateful for my experience with infertility and with fertility. My chapter of infertility was both difficult and very refining, and it prepared me for motherhood in a way that was very important and necessary for me.”
“A lot of my paintings looked at the joy of motherhood, the struggle with motherhood, and I think that was a lot of me coming to terms with, ‘What would this be like if this was my life? What would it be like to have kids?’ ”
“I’ve also learned that mortality is difficult. My painting process reflects that experience. I work in a very subtractive and additive process. I build things up with paint and then I sand them down. I will spend hours and hours on a painting only to take it into my woodshop days or months later and sand it down (parts or the whole) to begin again. And it is this play, between the building and the removing of what isn’t working, that produces my favorite paintings. It is a very symbolic and healing process for me on a personal level and reminds me that it is OK that I am a work in progress. I need experiences that sand me down and refine me, and I will have other experiences that build me back up, and I know that over time I am progressing and that is good.”
“My worth is concrete and independent of trials and hardships and also independent of achievements, even achievements like having children or being successful. My worth is just because it is.”
All quotes taken from an interview Caitlin did with the Deseret News in 2018.
