The pieces are finally starting to come together for me. For a long time, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say with this project. But one evening last year, the idea arrived like a quiet spark of inspiration—and it’s been on my heart ever since.
I believe the stories of mothers have deep value. In my own life, hearing the experiences of other women has been healing and transformative. We are not alone, even when it feels like we are. So many of the thoughts and emotions we face in early motherhood—especially the harder ones—are wrapped in shame and silence. We tuck them away, afraid to speak them out loud.
In her book Ordinary Insanity, Sarah Menkedick 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.”
Reading those words was the moment this project truly came to life for me. It gave language to what I felt but hadn’t yet articulated. This is why I care so deeply about sharing mom artists motherhood stories—because they hold power, both for the women telling them and for those of us listening.
For many of us, creativity is more than a passion—it’s an outlet, a way to process and make sense of what we’re feeling. After the birth of my second child, I experienced waves of sadness and anxiety. It wasn’t until I picked up my camera again (along with lots of reading and therapy podcasts!) that I began to feel like myself.
Through this project, I hope you feel less alone in your own motherhood journey. May these mom artists motherhood stories remind you that it’s possible to nurture both your children and your creative spirit—that your story matters too.
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.
Interested in being a part of this project? Get in touch here!
