A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mother

 

My favorite place to hang prints for drying - between my husband's and my guitars. Molly Chism's painting always improves whatever I put in front of it!

I took over the dining room table this weekend in order to print a linocut I've been working on the past week or so. My daughter is a little over two years old now (how the time flies) and I felt compelled to do a self portrait as a frazzled, sleep deprived mom. I don't enjoy doing self portraits, so to make it more bearable I decided to cut my face in half and really only focus on the hair and eyes. My goal was to experiment with some face shading and specifically highlight dark circles, splotches, and freckles. I don't often do the human figure, especially when it comes to relief carving, so I'm not surprised that I wasn't completely successful - but it was a great learning experience!

The result I call A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mother and yes, that is a reference to to James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Also, I can't think of a more fitting way to end this "studio" day than with a toddler smearing one of my best prints while it was laying out drying. So what's to be done? Hand it over to her so she can complete her masterpiece, of course!