In the Grass, With a Baby encompasses painting and drawing as forms to explore the crosshairs of the act of creating, mothering and art history. References to thresholds, time as tapestry, light and gesture have become key vehicles to convey emotion, atmosphere and rhythm within daily domestic life. Thresholds and passageways, time and rhythm, lead us toward revelations on humanity. My process involves taking inspiration from compositions and settings of paintings by master artists such as Vuillard, Manet and Pougny (Puni), with an aim of stepping into conversation with the art historical imagination. In the Grass, With a Baby, specifically draws inspiration from, contends with and plays on Manet’s Luncheon in the Grass and Vuillard’s Self Portrait in the Dressing Room.

Narratively through painting and drawing, I want to point the viewer’s mind towards the idea of our spaces – both exterior and interior – becoming an equal “covering” as they are an “undoing”. They reveal and conceal. They define, sometimes confine, but always refine the form of our characters. Somehow our spaces know our habits, floor boards and grassy paths alike bending to our rhythms, simultaneously witnessing us bend ourselves to walk in new shoes. I am interested in how our spaces cyclically record that humanity, resulting in both an exposure and formation of our inner worlds. This work incorporates elements of nature’s repetitive motif in contrast with domestic patterns in order to emphasis an “inner” and “outer” pull.

Related to this, my work also asks, can the cyclical “plainness” of each day – patterns seen, noises heard, tasks completed – contribute towards letting go of passionate grandeur and gaining a settled simplicity? In an autobiographical sense, In the Grass, With a Baby shares my own wrestling with the mundanity and sanctity within my heart as mother. As I share the floor with my children, starring at the same patterned rug, narrating the same birdsong book, I grapple with this humdrum aspect of familial motion. But can that motion of ceaseless repetition transfer into relatable rhythm, nostalgic in its nature? Can I gain a needed element of reconciliation through the sacrifice of novelty? That sacrifice, the drastic difference between ideal romanticism and realistic life, is portrayed through my references to high standing historical paintings. By weaving my own inner dialogues into Vuillard’s silence-filled interiors, inserting my own dog-days of summer picnics with buffets of pb&j scraps and smashed kids’ fruit into Manet’s luncheon, and substituting my maternal nature for the nude of Manet’s painting, I aim to expose and pierce that sacrifice within mothering. It exposes a needed reconciliation that’s learned only through the monotony of mothering.