A little while ago Rachel Powers wrote a book called The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood. I haven’t read it yet, because I’m yet to convince anyone to buy it for me, but I’ve read a few favourable reviews. Reviews from women who are grappling with the same issue: how the hell do you combine two all consuming and often mutually exlusive passions? How do mothers mark out time and space in their lives for creative work? Of course, all mothers in the western world think about paid work and childcare and mothering when so much of our paid work culture centres around childfree lifestyles, so there’s probably something there for non-artist mothers too. The thing about artist mothers is that they are likely to be doing a triple load – mothering, paid work and creative work – because creative work rarely pays the bills.
These are issues I was thinking about today when I skipped out of the car, leaving the Bloke and the Lad for a day of Boys Own Adventures (kicking leaves around the park, drinking babychinos, cooking dinner, that sort of thing) to attend my art class. This isn’t something I’ve done before, the art class that is (skipping out of the house is something I do reasonably regularly), spending money on improving my artistic skills isn’t something I’ve been able to swing for a long time. In preparation for the class, because I really really wanted to get my money’s worth out of being there with all the printing gear, I’ve been doing more drawing than usual. Trying to spend time with a few ideas and play with them after years of quickly sketching and then forgetting images all together. In the spirit of doing the art first, and the housework second, and perhaps more importantly, being honest about what that actually looks like in a real live house with a toddler, I took photos of the loungeroom that I wasn’t tidying before I started drawing. It has been tidied, and messed and tidied a bit since then, and not just by me, but for the record, sometimes it looks really messy and there’s nowhere to eat dinner.
It’s been worse too. And the table, which is out of view, was covered in painting things (the kid’s) and a ukelele. I could do a sort of illustrated version of A Room of One’s Own for the twenty-first century. My room of my own is also messy, but that’s my mess which is different and artistic and I wont hear a word against it. Not even from my Mum. She’s just jealous anyway. Ahem.
The product of all this wanton-ness? Wood engravings for the geek. Photographed, as is typical, at 11pm. The paper isn’t really yellow, it’s white.
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May 31, 2009 at 9:32 am
kel
bew-di-ful! i love prints from cuts! well done on ingoring the mess! im terrible at that.
May 31, 2009 at 10:05 am
Penni
Housework is so fricking eternal and ungratifying. Depresses me. I honestly do not understand how anyone with children can have clean houses (unless they have staff). Then again I don’t do a lot of housework, which is the only way I can parent, shop and cook, teach part time and still write novels. Husband keeps the house clean enough that we don’t have rodent or insect plagues. But there are always piles of clean washing waiting to be put away, always a backlog of laundry, always toys and clothes and books and paper strewn over the floor and surfaces, always either clean dishes draining or dirty dishes stockpiling. Sometimes we fight all this stuff to the margins, but within days it just all comes back again.
I guess real grown ups have Storage. And Dishwashers. And apparently the new thing in McMansions is a preparation room in the kitchen, that you can close off from guests.
May 31, 2009 at 10:18 am
froginthepond
Now we know what to get you for your birthday.
Trying hard not to be jealous (about the printing). And I very nearly wrote something trite about the juggling getting easier as they get older which, while true, would win this week’s Totally Missing the Point Award.
I still don’t know how mothers juggle the triple load, and I’ve done a bit of it. It’s easier when those around you accept that the creative is important but we come to some wonderful gender and cultural politics when they don’t.
May 31, 2009 at 10:43 am
kate
I suspect in some ways it gets easier while in others it gets harder as kids get older, particularly when they become teenagers with commitments and passions of their own that need to be fitted into the house. Small children can be squished into a shared bedroom while you use the other room as a studio, older children need a desk and so on.
When I looked around the class there were a few women roughly my age, one pregnant, one with two small kids, one childfree I think, one woman a bit older (with a young adult daughter about to head off overseas) and a couple of retirement age men. I wondered, but didn’t ask, when those men started taking their creative work seriously. I wondered if they’d put it off for years while they worked supporting their families and being responsible, because I suspect a lot of men do that for all the same reasons women give up their creative life to work inside the house. Creative work isn’t valued very highly in our culture, you’re only “allowed” to do it once you’ve finished your real job.
May 31, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Sarah
Wow, your post blew me away – because clearly you’re thinking about something that’s been on my mind of late too: how to balance motherhood, and all the things it requires you to do and be, with your own personal creativity. The reason I’ve been pondering this topic is I found a book at my local library called ‘The Fruits of Labour: Creativity, Self-Expression and Motherhood’. I picked it up out of mild curiosity but found it to be a really, really interesting read. There are contributions from Aussie writers and artists, but it’s edited out of England. Not that this matters. After all, motherhood in England is kind of the same as here anyway. Maybe you could get your library to order you a copy in (edited by Penny Sumner)? Rather depressingly, it’s an exploration of some of the ways women’s creative works suffer when kids, dinners, baths, washing up, school runs etc come into play. Some of the stories are positive though – about how having a child can bring a new dimension to your art. Worth a read.
May 31, 2009 at 2:47 pm
ThirdCat
I love that print. Just love it.
Commodore 64. Brilliant.
Also, yes to everything you just said.
Right now, I am teaching my children that it is their job to take their own dishes from the table to the sink. This is much harder than I thought it might be. They say stuff like, ‘Do we get paid for this?’ to which I reply, ‘Well do I get paid for cooking the tea?’ but that logic doesn’t really work.
May 31, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Tricia
Thats not messy!
Our living room looks like that (and worse) 90% of the time. I have been struggling with trying to work out whether I want to :
(a) clean more often and enjoy having a tidy house – but have very little time for other things I would prefer to be doing
(b) ignore the mess most of the time and enjoy the time available to other things… To be honest – I change my mind every week. One week I will focus on the house and love living in an organised house and the next I will go to the other extreme and focus on the garden or the sewing or whatever else i am into that week -and be extremely frustrated with the mess.
I love the engraving! I hope you enjoyed the art class.
May 31, 2009 at 10:07 pm
kate
Our living room looks better than it used to now that we have a much larger house. Same amount of crap everywhere, but more spread out. More spots to put your feet between the crap.
That is pretty much the equation Tricia, except there is the problem I have with concentrating on the Big Themes while tripping over the crap, or losing my stuff all together.
May 31, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Rachel Power
Hope it doesn’t seem horribly narcissistic to respond to a post that mentions your own book(?!), but just wanted to say that I think your first para sums up the issue so perfectly. I constantly envy people whose day jobs are aligned with their passions, so they aren’t trying to stuff their true interests in around the edges of their ‘real work’, as you say. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me to ditch the housework in favour of writing. I never quite know what they mean. Perhaps for a day or two–but then it only means having three times as much mess by the third day, doesn’t it?! Ah well, as you can see, I still don’t have the solutions, but it helps to know we’re all the same boat! And good on you for taking the class. Stake a claim for your art! And good on you for being real and showing the reality of a house with kids in it (though if you think that’s messy…).
June 1, 2009 at 11:30 am
Creativity and freedom « Frog in the pond
[...] a bit of a conversation going on over at innercitygarden about creativity and motherhood. And I listened to a conversation between Alan Brough and a [...]
June 1, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Geraldine
That’s just a house that’s lived in , isn’t it ? And your print is lovely ! Enjoy !
June 2, 2009 at 6:58 am
Jolisa
Oh, but what about a sketch or a woodcut of the messy room itself? As a memento. Call it Beautiful Mess, or How I Choose To Spend My Time, or What Happens When I Stop and Look, or Entropy, or something. (Or a Room of Two-and-a-Half’s Own?)
I’d buy it! One thing I wish I’d done over the years is a sketch of every desk I’ve ever had, in every city I’ve ever lived, caught in mid-project, just to commemorate the view and the stuff and the vibe… but I was always “too busy” at the time.
June 4, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Francis Xavier Holden
yeah – I’ve got Queensland Brush Box too. Great innit?
June 24, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Rebekka
My living room looks worse than that, and I don’t even have kids.
The print is grouse, and clearly more worthwhile than having a clean house (let’s face it, they only get dirty again anyway).
(Also, and entirely irrelevantly, I wonder how closely I’m related to Rachel? According to my parental unit, all the Powers descend from one bloke called William Power of Cork).
June 24, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Rachel
Ha–that’s very funny, because every time I meet someone from Ireland, they assume my family must originally be from Waterford, which is apparently where the surname Power is extremely common (and where I had been told it descended from). But, in my case, we have done our family tree and mine indeed descends from Cork (not really as romantic as Waterford). So, if the same goes for you, then yes–we would be related. Do you now live in Australia?