The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity

by Catherine Ricketts

Are caregiving and creative labor fundamentally at odds? Is it possible for mothers to attend to both? Few women artists feature prominently in the history of art, and even fewer who are mothers. How are motherhood and artmaking at play and at odds in the lives of women? What can we learn about ambition, limitation, and creativity from women who persist in doing both? Forged in the stress of early motherhood, The Mother Artist explores the fraught yet generative ties between caregiving and creative practice. As a young mother working at a museum, essayist Catherine Ricketts began asking questions about the making of motherhood and the making of art. Now, with incantatory prose and an intuitive gaze, she twines intimate meditations on parenthood with studies of the work and lives of painters, writers, dancers, musicians, and other creatives. Ricketts takes readers through the studios of mother artists, placing us in the company of women from the past and the present who persevere in both art and caregiving. We encounter Senga Nengudi's sculptures, which celebrate the pregnant body, and Toni Morrison's powerful writing on childbirth. We behold Joan Didion's meditations on maternal grief and Alice Neel's arresting portraits of mothers and babies. And we observe the ambition of sculptor Ruth Asawa, the activism of printmaker Elizabeth Catlett, and the constancy of writer Madeleine L'Engle. The Mother Artist welcomes us into a community of creatives and includes full-color images of their work. Part memoir, part biography, and part inquiry into the visual, literary, and performing arts, The Mother Artist contends that a brutal world needs art made by those who have cared for the vulnerable. This book isfor mothers who aspire to make art, anyone eager to discover the stories of visionary women, and all who long for a revolution of tenderness.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Memoir, Writing, Art, Biography

210 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2024

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronicling the work and lives of 30 mother artists, Catherine Ricketts has written a sprawling and glorious blueprint detailing the imaginative hows and urgent whys of maternal creativity. THE MOTHER ARTIST is a hopeful, luminous answer to the question Can and should a mother still dream? A brilliant and open-hearted gift of a book.

[Dominika]

So much of this resonated with me and articulated tensions I've felt since becoming a mother. Chapter 7 and the final chapter in particular spoke right to my soul. I listened on audio but would like to track down a physical copy because there were some really perceptive and beautiful passages I'd like to reference back to.

[kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Mother Artist, Ricketts explores the relationship between caregiving—specifically mothering—and creativity. Drawing upon mothering artists from past and present—Morrison, Didion, Jamison—Rickett’s begs questions such as: How does one create and flourish in their art while tending to another? Is motherhood “incompatible with artistic ambition”? Blending memoir with art history, this unique book provides deep insight and makes for inquisitive conversation.

The questions posed within this book felt reminiscent of the conversation Jamison has with readers in her recent memoir, Splinters, so I would recommend that for further reading on the topic.

Recommended for women who are trying to find balance between mothering and their craft or for readers who know women who are trying to find balance between mothering and their craft.

Thank you Broadleaf Books and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Available 08/20/2024!

[Merideth Estevez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mixing memoir with art analysis and history, this book is both unique and gripping. Catherine paints a picture of how motherhood, the caring and nurturing selflessness of mothers specifically, is woefully absent and pressingly essential to the art world. Enjoyed this work immensely and plan to give it to artist moms I know!

[Meghan Safstrom Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

So incredibly moving; I laughed and cried a lot. Each chapter functions as an essay -- one part looking at the life of various mother artists across time and space and one part memoir by the author. The dance between the two is more captivating than I expected; I often felt warm & grieved & seen in this beautiful work.

I pulled out some of my favorite quotes:


Pg 55: Labor

“In interviews, Morrison often recalled a moment at her desk at Random House that defined her entire career. She was in the thick of parenthood, juggling jobs, and rising at five in the morning to write. Overwhelmed by her responsibilities, she began to list them, filling a page. Then with utter clarity, she realized that there were only two things that she really needed to do. “If I can’t do these two things,” she remembers thinking, “I will disappear from the face of the earth. And the two were: 1. Mother my children and 2. Write books.” Thank God she did not forsake one or the other. Thank God she did not disappear but made herself visible — both herself and mothers who need to be seen.”

Pg 91: Balance

“Limitations can open new possibilities for creativity.”

Pg 95: Balance

“Creativity thrives in what’s called the window of tolerance—a state between hypo- and hyper-arousal characterized by calm, focus, and engagement. The nervous system’s job is to tell our bodies whether or not we are safe. When we don’t feel safe, it is difficult to access the deeper parts of who we are, from which we might create artwork that are innovative and true. But in the window of tolerance, in which we feel safe, alert, and present, artistry can flourish… And say an artist wants to have more than one child. Say she wants to have two or three children, on every two or three years. She might remain outside the window of tolerance for near a decade — a decade that probably falls just after she’s gotten some traction in her artistic career and could really take it somewhere. She might spend nearly a decade in the fog. It helps me to remember that fog accompanies transition: a cold front rolls in. The summer lake meets the autumn air, and mist hovers over the water. What has been gives way to what is becoming. Every day, the baby’s body grows stronger. First he lies there, just the way we place him. Now he rolls over. Now he scoots. Soon he’ll crawl, then stand, then walk. First, he notices his hands, studying them before his face. Now he swats. Now he grasps. Soon, he’ll use two fingers to raise a pea to his lips. The size of his brain will double in this first year and will nearly reach its adult volume by age three. His habits are erratic because his brain is ever-changing. Knowing this, I try to roll with the fog, and I keep looking for signs that one day, even if it’s a decade on, the fog will lift.”

Pg 97: Balance

“We all have a complex mix of resources and limitations related to time, energy, health, generational wealth, the money we earn ourselves, education, institutional relationships, institutional receptivity to our work based on race and gender and class and age, friendships, number of kids, and how well our kids sleep, among other things. It can help to make a list of all the resources available to us that can support our creative work. Maybe we can find some gratitude or some grace with ourselves as we struggle to find our balance.”

Pg 105: Vision

“When I have seen the world awhile through Ames’s eyes, I become newly aware of the light in my own world — its cheering presence, its variety of expression. Narrative vision shaped by maternal attention shows me more of the world than I had seen before.”

Pg 107: Vision

“Mothers know deep darkness, and they know that darkness can be the nesting ground of intimacy and private joy. I think of my son’s birth. I labored as the sun set late in the evening. It was deep night when my anguish ended, when I cradled his warm, damp body and ached for the first time with maternal love. As Jamison writes, “My baby opened a seam in the night and pulled me into the strange dark world beyond.” In the darkest hours, a mother might feed her child, barely seeing, reveling in flesh on flesh. And when a mother looks upon even the gloomiest or most deviant of her children, she sees promise, beauty, sparks.”

Pg 146: Ambition

“Having a child is perhaps the most ambitious thing a person can do. Motherhood is so ordinary that we have trouble seeing all that is extraordinary about it. It is, as the design critic Alexandra Lange says, “obscured by its own ubiquity” — too normal for us to notice. But to birth from our flesh a human person, body and sacred soul — that’s ambitions. To be tasked with stewarding that body and soul, to foster not only our children’s survival but the development of virtue and the cultivation of talent so that they might be a blessing to the world — that’s damn ambitious. When I pause to reflect on the magnitude of the role, I wonder how it can coexist with the ambition that animates professional artists.”

Pg 147: Ambition

“I’m used to noise and confusion and hard work,” Asawa once told a reporter who asked how she managed to make art while raising kids.

Pg 169: Community

“We always feel leaden the day we leave our children for work—her for weekend weddings, me for writing time. Many working moms feel this, but artists who work for themselves can feel especially guilty as they fight the lie that their work is self-indulgent.”

Pg 179: Perseverance

“ As [Madeleine L’Engle] resumed her writing practice, she established patterns that would last a lifetime. Her granddaughter remembers that she turned in at ine each night so that she’d be fresh for the next day’s work… she wrote every day. She did so not because she was inspired every day but so that the tools of her craft would be sharp when a rare moment of vision struck. As she writes in the memoir The summer of the Great-Grandmother, “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”

Pg 180: Perserverance

“How to abide in this chaos? I don’t wonder whether I will persevere in motherhood; I know I will not leave my children. But I do wonder how I will persevere. What will be the quality of my presence? Will I begrudge this thankless labor? Will I be tired all the time? Will I be short-tempered, escaping into housework while the boys toddle at my feet because laundry demands less of me than the children’s desires? Or will I wake up to the humor of this time—its slapstick antics? Will I notice its magic? Will I have joy with which to be generous?”

Pg 186: Perserverance

“That’s why L’Engle kept writing. Because she believed that our little human lives matter cosmically.”

Pg 188: Perserverance

“This is not to say that every mother is as virtuous as the vision I’ve laid out or that any mother is virtuous all the time. Motherhood has introduced me to the worst version of myself— a woman often embittered, impatient, and bored by the bodily imposition and tedium of this endeavor. But as I interact with artwork made by mothers, virtue comes more easily, as I become alert to the magic and humor shared between me and these tiny bodies.”

[Hallie Waugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gift to spend these pages in the company of Catherine’s vision. She does hear the very thing she praises in so many of the mother artists whom she profiles—she humanizes the world in the way only one who has cared for the vulnerable can. Her view is generous and precise and artful, and the lives of the women she encounters along the way are inspiring and galvanizing, particularly as a woman caught in the pull between the demands of art and the demands of children.

[Emily Funkhouser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this one. The tension between one’s gifts and callings professionally and within a family as a wife and mother is one that is I think felt and wondered about much more than it is discussed. I appreciated that Ricketts was acknowledging that tension and not making a prescriptive how-to book on balancing conflicting things, but elaborating on how women who successfully navigate this question are women who understand that the two can and should be taken as one whole life informing each other and elevating each other to the benefit of everything—and doing so in a way that does in fact involve meaningful departure from professional life as well as a meaningful return that is informed by the experience of motherhood. While I wish Ricketts had put less effort into being explicitly woke and more effort into being explicitly theological, I still found a great deal of wisdom and perspective that honored and celebrated the unique feminine and maternal experience as not a hindrance to meaningful work but the transformative crucible to make all of a woman’s work more meaningful. I loved her thoughts on a mother’s perspective…and how feeding oneself with reminders (artistic and otherwise) that her work is one of value, awe, gift, and high calling that will elevate, and not hinder, any other work she is called to. That this perspective is one which must be pursued in the face of conflicting cultural messaging (specifically that motherhood is the end of meaningful work) so that one can have “joy with which to be generous” is a good reminder.

“Baby time is incompatible with the working world, and I want to set my clock to his rhythms.”

“Artists are always caregivers of their audiences. One of the early influences on my thinking about the role of the artist in society was a lecture called "Artists as Caretakers of the Imagination." The lecturer suggested that because of the power of art to speak directly to the deep parts of who we are, artists have a responsibility to carefully tend to their audiences' imaginations—to be gentle, or to inspire virtue, or to agitate action toward justice. In Golden Hour, these dynamics become pronounced, reminding us that audience members are always vulnerable when they encounter works of art. And in artistry, as in parenthood, how we steward other's vulnerability will depend on whether we feel harried or healthy. We need seasons of respite to heal ourselves and others.”

“What was happening in LaToya Hobbs's creative life in those years she wasn't making? What is happening in mine? "All of life is the writing life," says my friend Charlotte Donlon, a writer and mother. Productive creative work is not limited to the moments when we sit down to type, or paint, or carve. As we live our lives—especially life's most intense seasons of longing and joy, tedium and intimacy—we are folding material into our pockets that will one day unfold as artistic expression.”

“The warmth with which she tells me about her kids is a welcome rebuttal to the narrative that children are a hindrance to one's career. Her boys haven’t gotten in the way of her artistic endeavors; their lives seem to be an integral part of something whole that she is weaving.”

“When artists marvel at the world, they give our ordinary lives back to us through eyes of wonder.”

“I consider the consequences of this boredom. If I'm bored by those closest to me, what hope do I have of experiencing reverence for the stranger? How quickly can boredom erode into disregard, which can erode into violence, when we fail to be awed by others? On the contrary, if we practice a discipline of loving contemplation in our most intimate relationships, will our vision be trained to regard all people through the eyes of love?”

“But the story of Just Above Midtown helps me to redefine wealth. Following Goode Bryant's example, I try to look comprehensively at all of the resources available to me, not least among them my vibrant village of extended family and the friendships I'm committed to nurturing.”

“I don't wonder whether I will persevere in motherhood; I know I will not leave my children. But I do wonder how I will persevere. What wilbe the quality of my presence? Will I begrudge this thankless labor? Will I be tired all the time? Will I be short-tempered, escaping into housework while the boys toddle at my feet because laundry demands less of me than the children's desires? Or will I wake up to the humor of this time—its slapstick antics? Will I notice its magic? Will I have joy with which to be generous?”

“It's another virtuous circle: I spend time with art made by mothers; I return to my family with humor and awe; and I can, in turn, make art leavened by the humor and awe I've been given.”

“While I don't see dragons, I do, after hours in L'Engle's authorial mind, start to see stardust. There's the glimmering surface of my children's skin, the light in their eyes, the sacred nature of their wonder, and the uncanny tact that they exist at all and are entrusted to my care. This is a powerful elixir against the tedium of motherhood, a shot in the arm for the adventure before me.”

“Our vision of the world is shaped by what we see. What an artist sees, therefore, shapes the world that she shows to others in her work. Again and again, I look at these frail, magnificent bodies. I look at them to be sure they're safe. I look at them because they demand it of me: "Mama, look at me." "Mama, come find me." And I look at them because they are so beautiful that I can't stop looking. When I'm with them, I catch myself staring. When I leave them, I study their photographs. In all this looking, my view of the world is reframed by maternal humanism, composed of awe, curiosity, and adoration for the vulnerable ones of this world—which is to say, all of us. Why persevere in making art? Because our communities need art made by those who can't take their eyes off of the vulnerable ones of this world.”

“I have not yet resolved many of the tensions I explore in these chapters. Except for this one: whether an artist comes back to her art practice three weeks or thirty years after her child is born, her audience is better for her departure, and for her return.”

[Cara Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book every mother or artist, or mother and artist, or human who knows an artist-mother should read.

[Violeta]

This book would make a lovely gift for a new or expectant artist-mother. Ricketts writes about motherhood reverently, about art thoughtfully, and about the intersection of the two (and the potential influence over social change) with great optimism.

I really appreciated being introduced to the work of some new-to-me visual artists in these pages (especially Becky Suss, LaToya Hobbs, and Ruth Asawa). I found their brief profiles interesting and compelling enough to seek out more of their art.

What complicated my experience with this book is that it is written against the backdrop of recent parenthood and motherhood to very young children, and one that enjoys *many* supports…and while the author acknowledges her context and privilege, it varies so much from my own almost two decades-long experience of motherhood that, in some instances, Rickett’s reverence and optimism don’t land. I may be a little jaded and I’m definitely too careworn at this point to be the target audience for this book, but I’m glad it exists in the world.

[Moriah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mother Artist is about balancing one’s joy and drive of being an artist while also diving into the complexities of being a mother. I thought the author did such a good job of organizing the book into the relatable chapters and talking about artists who are mothers as well as working their craft. I loved how the author talked about the example of artists who have become mothers, take a maternity leave and come back to their craft, how much more confident and risky their craft becomes. It has deeper meaning, and the artist has become aware of different areas in her life to express and convey. I related so much to both the duality of being an artist and a mother and also the beautiful meshing of both worlds. This book highlights and discusses these issues. I loved the pictures in the middle of the book, and I was able to flip back and forth as the author talked about the different pieces. It does read more like an academic book but i found it informative and interesting.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mother Artist was such an enjoyable read... I honestly finished the whole thing in two days, I loved it that much! It so beautifully combines memoir and storytelling with an exploration of what it means to be both a mother and an artist. One of the gifts of this book was the chance to be brought into the author's experiences of and reflections on motherhood in such an intimate and personal way- I feel like I got to know her just from reading this book. Also, I should say that I am not a mother or an artist, and yet I was still so moved and inspired reading this book. This book is not only for mothers or artists. I think everyone has a lot to gain from reading this book.

[Grace E. Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catherine Rickett’s excellent book THE MOTHER ARTIST is a book that sees me in my struggles and in my triumphs as a Mother with artistic ambition, like no other work has done before. Through loving and poignant portraits of her own journey, as well as that of other mother-artists she encounters, Rickett shows us what it takes for I be a mother and an artist, and enlivens our hope that this maternal work matters deeply to a world in desperate need of nurture.

[Devon Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible! I’m not an artist. But I am a mother. This book has inspired me to reclaim the parts of myself that feel lost in the trenches of motherhood. I am in awe of the beautiful writing and personal touches this author put in to this book! I would highly recommend this to any mother at any stage in their journey. And then I would recommend to everyone else because everyone should experience this amazing book!

[Briana Yarbrough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended reading for any artist who is mothering. Whether it be their own art or those of others in their community as they create. I especially connected with the chapter examining Ruth Asawa and Greta Gerwig's work in the light of ambition as mother artists. Gerwig's version of Little Women had a profound impact on shifting my goals as a mother and artist during the pandemic.

In March of 2020, as the world shut down, I rented Little Women and was moved to tears at the end scene where Saoirse Ronan's Jo stares lovingly as though through a nursery window, in anticipation of holding her book in her arms as it is birthed into the world, hot off the press. I realized that I had works in me waiting in the wings to be birthed into the world and that I wanted that pure joy of welcoming them for myself. Only recently, after a move to the SF Bay Area, have I become familiar Ruth Asawa's work. My first introduction was a series of masks on display at the Cantor Arts museum, which I was fascinated to learn in Rickett's essay, were created by Asawa by intentionally asking guests at their dinner table to sit to have their faces cast and captured for perpetuity.

I am eager to go examine these masks again understanding now they were a rite of passage for visitors to their home. Before reading this essay, I was unaware that Ruth, a survivor of the Japanese internment camps in the US, was a mother of six, or that she was a student in Black Mountain. A place keenly in my awareness, very close to the home of my late brother - also an artist who lived in the North Carolina mountains before passing away during the recent hurricane with his family.

I picked up this book before that tragedy and held onto it. Very much reeling from the loss, I finally read it in starts and stops. The stories inspired me to sign up for some ceramics studio time again. After a long pause. Ricketts writes in the concluding essay: "Whether an artist comes back to her art practice three weeks or thirty years after her child is born, her audience is better for her departure, and for her return." Hoping in the clay I will find healing and a return to something tangible to create meaning out of the losses we have experienced this year.

[Lainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book started out a bit slow, but it gained momentum into some of the most brilliant writing about what it must feel like to be an artist and a new mother.

Across dozens of examples of artists, she captures the tension between the creeping, maternal overwhelm and the subtle-but insistent- internal drive to create art.

If a mother has 3 or more children, what happens to her work across the decade (or more) of time that she must spend prioritizing the safety and well-being of her children? For the first time in writing, I see scores of mothers who embraced their taut connection to their own artistry, learning to delicately nurture their own creativity as much as their children.

She concludes with a beautiful argument that it’s precisely the vantage point of mothers that we need more of in our arts. They see the most vulnerable— which is all of us.
She gives mothers hope that it does not have to perpetually be an all-or-nothing existence, but rather it can be precisely in the midst of the chaos and limitation of motherhood that the greatest works of their lives can be visioned.

[John Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am the farthest thing from being a mother, and I am taken by Catherine Rickett’s first book: The Mother Artist. Cat gracefully pulls back the curtain on the hidden parts of motherhood, inviting the reader into what feels like an intimate conversation between old friends. As someone who has only been mothered and observed friends who are mothers, I was captivated by the push and pull realities of birthing and raising children - how it can be humorous, brutal, and mundane, how those littles ones can feel like an intrusion and gift, the power and fragility of a mother’s body, the awe and grief that accompanies introducing an image bearer to a world of beauty and wound-making, the fatigue and gratitude that comes with it all. Cat doesn’t just tell the story, she paints it and opens up her audience to a reality that only an artist can tap into. I’m grateful for a book so forged in self-reflection that it makes you “reflective by proxy.” I’m still ruminating: “How might our world be humanized by work made through a mother’s eyes?”

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read every book for artist mothers that I can get my hands on, and this has been my favorite so far. Catherine's writing is beautiful and there are many moments through the book that left me in silence - mulling a specific set of words or ideas over in my head. Now that I've read it in its entirety, I'm looking forward to combing back through and picking out specific artists and texts she's referenced and doing further reading or research. There are many resources mentioned in the book.
Catherine is clearly an ambitious woman who cares about her craft and yet, she speaks with such honesty and humility about the splendors of children. The book holds children with such dignity, causing me to feel seen, that surely both children and art are worth my time and devotion. This is rare and wonderful. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a child and also makes things.

[Nina Pernina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book wasn’t for me. I’m “dnf-ing” at 30%. The main theme of art and motherhood is for me, but the structure and the writing style of this book irritated me. On one hand we have an author, who shares her experience of pregnancy and birth (well, so far along I came in the book) and it was nothing special, very generic descriptions of events, on the other hand we have very different passages in writing style, about art, which is very dry and full of definitions. In this second academic part the author presents female artists like wikipedia excerpts, again very dry, full of facts and then the author includes full of quotes of mentioned artists and describes their work without any picture references. I just couldn’t delve into the subject…

Thank you NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Gillian Farago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to 1517 Media and NetGalley for my free digital copy of this book in exchange for a review.
It is very beautifully written, and explores both the barriers to creation for women artists who become mothers, and the blossoming of creativity in an often different direction for them, stemming from their mothering experiences. Descriptions and musings about Catherine’s own journey through giving birth and mothering punctuate the stories of many others.
This would make a beautiful gift for any woman artist entering into the world of conceiving, carrying and birthing a child, then learning how to raise it alongside their artistic career or hobby. A recommended read, one I prefer to dip into to give time to digest, rather than read in one sitting.

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great resource for any creative mother needing reassurance to continue in her craft while navigating parenthood. This particular book has many similarities to The Baby on the Fire Escape, some of the same artist-mothers are referenced with many newer, contemporary artists added. Ricketts style of writing, incorporating her personal experience, is captivating from the first few pages and guides readers through the entirety of the text. As an artist who also became a mother during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found solace and kinship in reading of another creative mothers strength and perseverance through this same period in time. I am grateful to Ricketts for bringing a fresh perspective to the topic of the artist mother.

[Natalie Ornelas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn’t captivate me as much as I thought it would, but I agree wholeheartedly with what Ricketts is saying: We need artists who are mothers, for all the ways their hearts have been stretched, tenderized, and transformed. This book details many of the challenges that face mothers who wish to continue creating art through the mountains and valleys of motherhood and highlights prominent mother artists who persevered in creativity while raising their children.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely exquisite book. Easily one of my favorite reads in a long time as it beautifully weaves the author's vulnerable narrative with insightful reflections on greater societal issues. Catherine Rickett's writing is lovely yet thought provoking and while some may assume this book is just for women, moms or artists, it is much bigger than that.

[Katie Starling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice book I won from LibraryThing. I enjoyed the way the book was organized and felt like I made a few personal connections with the text. I will pass this book along to another person to enjoy through my Little Free Library. I looked to see if there was an audiobook available as I would have preferred to listen as I read along, but no luck.

[Catie Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! I felt so seen throughout reading it. My favorite chapter was about ambition and the tension between continuing with (ambitious) creative work and being a present parent.
This book encourages artist mothers that the world needs them and their perspectives. It’s a beautiful, thoughtfully written book. I’m sending it to all my artist friends who are mothers!

[Sarah White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable and encouraging. Learned about many artists I didn't know, and it took me back to all the baby feels. This book was personally encouraging as a mother and a writer. Lots of great one-liners to make you laugh and also to ponder for days. Recommend for moms into art, the creative process, and living with intention.

[Kaia Preus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a gift to mother artists. I have savored its pages and felt comforted and encouraged by the stories of mother artists told within its pages. The central idea—that the world needs the art made my mothers—is beautifully examined and unfolds organically throughout.

[Katie Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

All mothers need to read this book, whether you claim the title artist or not. I felt so seen as a new mom and loved learning about mother artists in all stages and from different background that teach the world the importance of motherhood.

[Liz Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was inspiring, challenging, and made me think deeply about my vocation as both mother and artist. I highly recommend it! And I look forward to returning to choice passages in the years to come.

[Sarah White · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir of an artist mom with profiles of other artist moms woven through it to reflect on why and how we might continue to nurture our art as we nurture children.

[Mariette Chao · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS BOOK was inspiring, informative, and gorgeously crafted. THIS IS A MUST READ.