How has being a mother informed your art practice in unexpected ways?
Being a mother has allowed me to be flexible, have fun and be in the moment. Life through a child’s eyes is a brilliant place to see from.
Has seeing art through your child’s eyes changed any of your long-held opinions?
Seeing art through my child’s eyes is the most exciting. My daughter has an incredible insight and articulation with how she sees the world. Her perceptions are thoughtful, colorful, and candid. She makes me laugh all the time because she thinks of things so profoundly. I’m always in awe and surprised of how wise she is for a 10-year-old. She comprehensively speaks about art poetically and clearly, which allows me to be flexible, spontaneous, and open to the unexpected things that happen when making my art.
How have you handled the delicate balance of being a working mother?
It’s challenging when there are many projects and deadlines simultaneously. I try to communicate with my daughter openly about my schedule. She loves being at my studio, going to openings, and engaging in conversations. As much as possible I include her. It’s important for me to spend all of my free time with her and make our time special. Just like so many other mothers before me, I bring her along. When she was young, I carried her on my back. I think this is why she is so comfortable around creatives and loves talking about ideas and art.
What are the lessons you learned from your mother that you hope to also impart to your child?
I’ve learned from my mother to allow my daughter to be her own person and to facilitate her endeavors. Parenting for me is being able to provide access and expose my daughter to as many positive experiences and people so she learns how to choose and make the best decisions for herself.
What are your most treasured rituals?
Our most treasured ritual is cooking a family meal on Sundays. We go to the farmers market on Saturday to get the ingredients. We are both foodies and enjoy eating all kinds of delicious cuisines. My daughter has a sophisticated palate because I introduced her to a variety of foods early. When we’re at restaurants, waiters are always surprised at how well she understands the menu and orders an unexpected dish for her age.
Has seeing art through your child’s eyes changed any of your long-held opinions?
Small children have no taste, just preferences, so it’s always a thrill to see what triggers delight in their brains. I took my worms to see Rebecca Morris’s outstanding survey at the ICA in Los Angeles a few months ago, and they lost their minds. It was late on a Saturday night and the reflective silver and golds in the massive paintings picked up the glittering light of the city, the vermilion reds and purples glowed electric in the cavernous galleries, and the kids ran around breathlessly saying, “This one is a fairy house of moss! This one is the ocean where whales sleep! I love this one the most because it’s the feeling of birthday cake!” I love seeing art with them because their experience is so immediate and their connections so surprising.
How have you handled the delicate balance of being a working mother?
There’s nothing delicate about it; I have three kids 5 and under so it’s more like beast mode. The unsexy truth is I just have to be extremely scheduled, which is incredibly boring to talk about but that’s the only way this works. I’m in the studio, door closed to the world, by 8:30 a.m. after drop-offs, and I work until dinner time (my husband does pick-ups). We try to sit down to eat dinner as a family most nights, and all three kids do bath time together which is both cute and efficient.
If I’m on a big deadline, I drag my corpse back to the studio after the kids go down, and work from 8 p.m. to midnight or 2 a.m. The exhaustion can be soul-deadening but also motivating; I feel immense gratitude for a chapter of life that is so full right now. And the chaos of home makes the quiet and freedom of the studio feel, by contrast, luxuriously unstructured and generative. Having a studio eight minutes from home and school is key.
What are the lessons you learned from your mother that you hope to also impart to your children?
Virginia Woolf wrote something like “a woman writing thinks back through her mothers,” and I know that to be true in my painting practice. My mother and the matriarchal women in my life are very much the prism through which I see the world, and inherently an influence on how I mother and paint.
I grew up in a big rambunctious household with three sisters, and my mom was authoritative without being authoritarian. She was tough and expected the most from us, but we were very free, running around the farm, building forts, and playing with the dogs and chickens. She really fostered this magical, secret animal and plant world for us, and I hope I can give my kids that sense of the natural world. To love and know nature gives a person an enormous sense of belonging in the world.
What are your most treasured rituals?
A very simple one: filling a big old igloo cooler with water and tossing a few buckets and watering cans to the kids. They’ll shift gears immediately and start watering the garden, playing together instead of bickering, helping each other, and looking for insects. My mom taught me this trick and it’s become a regular ritual to change the mood, bring the kids together, or just occupy a hot evening in LA.
How has being a mother informed your art practice in unexpected ways?
Being an artist is about having open channels and tapping into them. Motherhood is an incredible channel opener. There's also this shedding of ego in certain ways that’s helpful. As a mother, you have to get used to some states of being you would’ve found embarrassing before. Not getting easily embarrassed is completely invaluable in art making.
How have you handled the delicate balance of being a working mother?
I think part of it is to not treat it too delicately. Things will get messy and that’s OK. You’re juggling eggs and occasionally you drop one. I have this mantra when I’m overwhelmed. I just repeat to myself, “It’s all getting done,” and it’s miraculously true. The important eggs rarely fall.
What are the lessons you learned from your mother that you hope to also impart to your child?
My mom is a fighter. She’s always willing to speak up in the face of injustice or on behalf of someone with less of a voice. She’s also always helping someone. She and my stepdad adopted four kids from the foster care system. I hope I can instill in my son a sense of responsibility to his community and a willingness to fight on behalf of the most vulnerable among us.
