Collection: MOTHERHOOD - PLAY Collection

The Motherhood – Play Collection explores the emotional complexity of motherhood through abstraction, gesture, and layered process. These paintings reflect the lived experience of transformation—how joy and difficulty coexist, and how identity evolves through care, fatigue, love, and persistence.

Created as my daughter approached her third birthday, this body of work emerged during a return to painting after a prolonged creative pause. The act of painting became a way back into play: experimenting, following curiosity, relinquishing control, and allowing the work to unfold intuitively.

Each piece holds multiple energies—dark and light, deliberate and spontaneous. Some paintings incorporate collaborative marks made with my daughter, where interruption became contribution. These moments mirror motherhood itself: the necessity of flexibility, the beauty of imperfection, and the unexpected clarity that arises when control is loosened.

An early lesson from my great-aunt Ann, also a painter, guides this work: “To show the light, draw the darkness.” These paintings hold both. They invite collectors to live with complexity, warmth, and resilience—offering visual depth that continues to reveal itself over time.

Signature Works

The first paintings shown in this collection anchor the series. These large-scale works carry the emotional and formal core of the body of work and are offered as one-of-a-kind originals prior to gallery exhibition.

All works in the Motherhood – Play Collection are created using professional-grade materials through a layered, intuitive process, often built over multiple sessions. Some paintings hold quiet restraint; others lean into density and gesture. Smaller oil paintings offer more intimate entry points into the same themes and process.