The Artist-Mother At Work: A Peek into My Workspace
- Stephanie Morillo
- May 6
- 3 min read
Updated: May 6
In December 2024, facing both the end of my maternity leave with my second baby and a long and cold winter stuck indoors, I presented my three-year-old daughter with an idea: "What if we make paintings together and have them displayed in a real life art gallery?" She did not need much convincing. My daughter loves museums. She is in preschool and comes home with artwork daily. She loves making messes and blending colors. She loves commanding attention. And she loves hanging out with me.
I hadn't touched a paintbrush in 17 years but I needed something fun to do with my toddler. Rochester Contemporary Art Center's annual 6x6 exhibit provided the perfect premise for this with a reward at the end: create up to four artworks that measure 6 inches by 6 inches and have them displayed at their annual exhibit in June. My daughter has seen plenty of art in museums, and loved the idea of having her artwork on a "museum's walls". (Museum, art gallery; to-may-to, to-mahh-to.)
So I bought a bunch of paints, brushes, wrapped 6x6 canvases, two mini easels, and a palette pad. I pulled out a kid's smock I'd gotten secondhand for her, and a brand new apron for me. We set up on her once pristine activity table and promptly wrecked it with paint. We put a palette pad between us. She'd choose her colors and I'd choose mine. She'd choose the butterfly brush and I'd reach for the flat brushes. "Remember, there are no mistakes in art," I'd say, and we'd get started. And for twenty minutes we'd experiment with colors, brushstrokes, textures, and patterns, we'd compliment each other's work, and we'd remind each other that there were no mistakes if we didn't like the end result. (Old paintings make the best underpaintings for new paintings.) We've made many more than the four paintings each that we submitted to 6x6. By my count I've made over thirty this year alone.
Since that cold December morning I've made small tweaks in my process. We still share the same tools. I still paint in 15-30 minute increments. I buy wrapped canvases that can fit comfortably on our activity table and comfortably within reach (currently up to 12x12). But working on a cramped activity table, hunched over a canvas, isn't ideal. I started working with acrylic markers in part to be able to finish paintings in my room, in case the kids needed me after bedtime. Acrylic markers have freed me up to work with more precision and add more detail to my pieces. The contrast between textures backgrounds (acrylic paint) and flat drawings and detailed elements (acrylic markers) are now visible in many of my current works.
Art has found its way into the few free spaces I have in my day. I have a bin with some tools of my own, including my markers, and gallery-wrapped canvases for a future series. I often dream of art and I even plan out new pieces while nursing my son in the middle of the night. I will sometimes come upstairs during a lunch break and add a detail or two to a painting, taking pictures of the changes and adding them to a dedicated folder on my phone.
Being an artist-mother means turning a child's approach to art into guiding principles. It's allowing myself to be inspired by the way young children are completely uninhibited while making art. They do not want to be restricted, they do not second guess themselves, and they let their desires drive them to an end result. I try not to let my perceived (and let's face it, real) limitations stop me from creating or starting over. I allow myself to be driven by curiosity and inquiry and I embrace working from truly anywhere. We don't need a dedicated art studio to make art.
