Mothermaker. Motherartist. Thinking a lot about motherhood and creativity these days. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Sometimes it looks like this: a toddler on the mend gets frustrated because Momma won’t give her a brush. And no she doesn’t want her own brush, she wants that brush.
Initially I felt frustrated. All I’m trying to do is just paint this background in order to not waste the Prussian blue gouache that I put out on my palette for a different painting, and which I didn’t get to use because she woke up unexpectedly. Hm.
Then I thought, this little tomato pincushion. It’s not a necessarily important painting. It just started out as a quick sketching exercise during a creativity session with Mia of Cloudwalkerstudio.
What would happen if I just let her help me paint the background? The worst that could happen is she doesn’t listen and haphazardly paints all over the page and covers up the sketch of my tomato and maybe gets some on our already stained couch. Ok, that seems fairly harmless.
And so I just let her help me. And she listened. And she tried to be careful. She let me help her dip the brush into the mason jar of water and into the glob of paint on the palette. And then she set paintbrush to paper. And I taught her that she was helping me paint the background. And she listened and also wanted her independence but it was good and an experiment and a TOTAL lesson in letting go during this process and not worrying about mistakes and not taking a piece so seriously and exploring.
Who knew an unexpectedly short nap would result in a moment of motherhood and artisthood (?) like this.
Have you had any unexpected mother/maker/artist moments? Share them below!
