Crafter/writer Pip Lincolne impressed me, as always, with her very Zen approach to the complexities of finding time to be creative as a mother of three. I also really enjoyed meeting Miriam Sved, one of the editors of Mothers and Others: why not all woman are mothers and not all mothers are the same, who brought so much intelligence to the discussion.
We were all a bit startruck when the next person in the studio was none other than the author of the parenting bible Baby Love, Robin Barker, who has turned her hand to writing fiction. So what do you think we all talked about afterwards? Babies? Nup. Football! Barker turned out not only to be an obsessed Sydney Swans fan, but a huge fan of Miriam's latest novel, Game Day.
Host Michael Cathcart suggested that it has become an accepted fact that the arts are feminised in Australia, and the cliche of 'the artist' is now "Mum writing or painting while she has the kids at home".
This line of questioning threw me a bit -- oh, if only there was a rehearsal for radio interviews and then you got to do it all again, but better! Fortunately, Miriam was there to give the best answer, responding that she thinks the fantasy of 'the artist' as a solitary male, cloistered away from the rabble of daily life, remains the persistent perception.
I was having coffee with an artist the other day who mentioned how much it shits her that whenever a male artist is photographed with his children in the studio, it will attract a stupid amount of admiration. (Admittedly, I think I've been guilty myself of sharing such an newspaper image on Facebook!) When of course the majority of women artists work in this context all the time, with no one congratulating them for allowing their children to occupy their 'sacred space'.
What do you think? Has the mother at home with her kids really become the predominant 'cliche' about the arts in Australia?
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