Motherhood, time and the art of surrender

For my birthday this year, my partner gave me the most thoughtful possible gift: a week at Varuna, the writers' centre in the Blue Mountains.

I have been to Varuna several times now, and each time induces a different emotional response -- sadly, often characterised by an existential crisis on the first or second day that finds me wandering the streets of Katoomba in a state of panic about my neglected creative "practice".

Between full-time work and my family's needs, my life feels almost entirely controlled by external demands, so time at Varuna is usually the first chance I've had to stop and really think for months. This time, after a particularly busy period at work, I also seemed to have completely lost the ability to structure my own time and felt completely at sea! 

Of course once you finally get your bearings, you realise it's already Wednesday and what felt like a luxurious surfeit of time stretching out in front of you suddenly seems to be spiralling rapidly toward the inevitable end date. But a luxury it still is. A chance to once again glimpse the possibilities, if nothing else. Each time helps me remember that to write is really just to pay attention to what's around you -- so simple, but so easily lost in the chaos of "normal" life.

Angst-ridden moments aside, each time I'm at Varuna there are also lovely instances of synchronicity. Years ago, I was doing a residency alongside poet Kylie Rose, who left a book outside my door: Object Lessons by Eavan Boland. It was the perfect thing at the perfect time. Boland provides such an acute description of the new relationship with the sensory world (and therefore, peculiar form of creative power) that comes with mothering that she almost single-handedly inspired the conclusion to the book I was working on, which became The Divided Heart.

Julienne van Loon

This time, writer Jane Messer just happened to mention a Griffith Review essay, "The Play of Days", written by Julienne van Loon, a novelist who was at Varuna at the same time as Kylie Rose and myself all those years ago. At the time, she had recently won the won the Australian/Vogel Award for her first book, Road Story.

I recall discussions with Julienne and the other residents about the feared threats motherhood might pose to a successful writing life. So it was doubly fascinating for me to not only discover that she had had a baby but that her experience had been characterised by such blissful surrender to her son's agenda-free pace, amid all the risks that that state poses to our "selfhood", which she describe so beautifully in her essay:

I have taken twelve months leave from my usual work to be home with a new baby, and one of the biggest adjustments I had had to make is to arrive at a new understanding of time, one measured only by the fragile, mutable pattern of basic human needs: sleep, food, warmth, contact. ... And it doesn't matter. Unless you can't shake the itch for something more meaningful to do.   

Yep, that pesky itch...

"I feel like I'm being rubbish at both."

A few years ago, I read an interview with musician Tracey Thorn (Everything But the Girl, Massive Attack) where she spoke about giving music away altogether after having her three children.

Thorn and her partner, bandmate Ben Watt, had taken the kids with them on tour — and then decided that they were never doing that again!

"That tour was just weird," Thorn said. "I was putting the kids to bed at the hotel then racing off to soundcheck and I remember thinking, I don't like doing both. I feel like I'm being rubbish at both. So I took a unilateral decision to stop."

Watt agreed: "To be honest, it was never easy. When you throw kids and family into it something has to give. You can't keep all that going at the same time. You'd go mad."

For several years, Thorn was a full-time parent, not even jotting down lyrics in her notebook. But she did keep a journal about her life, which she described as "just a list of events of marginal interest" that would never see the light of day.

Well, I hope some of those thoughts have crept onto the pages of her new memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star, because sometimes those so-called "marginal interest" notes are exactly the kind of things others want and need to hear! And knowing Thorn's lyrics, I suspect they're far from boring.

If you're reading this blog, then the interview with Tracey Thorn on Radio National's Books and Arts Daily yesterday is essential listening.

Lost in Living: A new doco about art and motherhood

Yesterday I got one of those messages in my inbox that makes your heart skip a little beat.

It was a message from American filmmaker Mary Trunk, telling me that my book, The Divided Heart, played a part in helping her develop her now almost completed documentary feature, Lost In Living, which tracks the lives of four women artists.

To cut a long story short, I'll share her words below:

I have spent the last seven years following four mothers who are artists. Two of them I met when they were pregnant (they also happen to be best friends) and the other two are older and have adult children. During this long and fascinating process I was given your book "The Divided Heart", which I found so powerful and moving. I have since been following your blog, which I thoroughly enjoy. Your book is incredibly inspiring and insightful. It helped me figure out the approach to my film, the interview questions over the seven years I documented these women and confirmed that I wasn't completely crazy to make a film about this topic. Thank you!

Going by the initial footage she has released, it is clear that Mary has captured something very raw and honest in her subjects -- with regards to art and mothering, but also female friendship.

As I have since told her, it never ceases to amaze me how common the issues are for women artists -- how the same feelings get expressed time and again, often with the exact same words. I also fully relate to her fear that it might be crazy to document this topic, when so many people tell you it's just a "niche" subject without any great import for the world at large.

It is humbling to know that The Divided Heart has reached the other side of the world and played even a small part in Mary's film.

As she continues through post-production, she is posting short clips on YouTube and her blog, touching on subjects like "What's so great about creativity?" or "Baby and sacrifice: what do you give up?".

I will endeavour to keep you posted about possible screenings of "Lost in Living" here in Australia. Till then, you can watch an extended trailer below:

Artist-mothers, there's a new MAN in town...

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by two incredible women, dancer Jo Pollitt and artist Lilly Blue, to help them launch their online Mother Artist Network (MAN).

Jo and Lilly are the editors of BIG Kids Magazine, a gorgeous mag jam-packed with creative ways of inspiring kids to respond to the world around them though story, art and film. There are also interviews, photos and a free print contributed by a contemporary artist.

Their aim was to produce a magazine that encourages "bravery, imagination and generosity" (hence, B.I.G.) through collaborations between children, parents, artists and diverse communities.

Looking through this mag, I ended up spending a whole morning just doodling and making pictures with my kids -- something I haven't done for ages (usually too busy, too much work/housework to do, blah blah blah...). One activity in the book is to have a go at your own BIG logo, and this was mine:

Bit fiddly for a logo, I know, but I got a tad carried away...

The Mother Artist Network blog is an offshoot of the BIG creative project Jo and Lilly have embarked on, a place that invites an ongoing discussion about creative practice and motherhood.

As I've said in my little launch rave over at MAN HQ, if Lilly and Jo's glorious magazine project is anything to go by, MAN promises to be an extraordinary forum for artists to share their experiences of navigating mothering and the creative process -- a place to flee to when the littlies are finally asleep and you're in need of some solace and inspiration from kindred spirits!

If you want to contribute, email all artwork/stories/rants to info@bigkidsmagazine.com with MAN in the subject line and they will post the material as part of the series. They are interested in "work/questions/artwork that invite response and talk to the 'divide' or otherwise of the ongoing mother dance".

Look forward to seeing you there...

An interview about The Divided Heart (three years on...)

It's funny how things come in waves. I haven't been approached for an interview about The Divided Heart for a while, and then I suddenly received three requests all in the one week.

All the requests were for great websites/blogs run by impressive creative types. I will link to the interviews as they are posted, but the first cab off the rank is a chat with bookseller Nina Mansfield over at typset, a blog offering "book dirt for book worms".

I am always surprised when women without children tell me they loved The Divided Heart. It's really heartening to know that it spoke to them anyway, whether they're wrestling with the question of whether or not to have children, or because they found it emblematic of broader questions about what it means to be an artist, or at least live a creative life.

Nina apologised for her "rambling" questions, but they weren't at all. They were very thoughtful -- and it was nice to have the chance to revisit some of the issues.

It's funny, too, that she used the pic above with the post. It wasn't until after I published my book that I realised "the divided heart" most often gets used in a religious context. Ah well, it's all about the internal conflicts that come with devotion, I guess!

Vale Sarah Watt

As most of you probably already know, artist and filmmaker Sarah Watt passed away on Friday. Readers of The Divided Heart often mention her chapter to me as one that especially spoke to them. The photo to the left is the one she sent me for possible use in the book -- Sarah with her kids, Clem and Stella.

Sarah was easily the most unassuming, down-to-earth artist I've ever met. She had the pure creative spirit of someone who makes art because she has to -- as a way of coming to terms with, but also celebrating, the world around her. And by that I mean the ordinary world. The mundane, the suburban, the everyday was her territory -- a reminder that there's beauty, solace and humour to be found everywhere.

The last time I saw her was when Sally Rippin and I attended the opening of her film My Year Without Sex at the Sun Theatre in Yarraville. I laughed so hard I was weeping through the whole thing. Afterwards I told her that it had been like watching my own family on screen -- but funnier. Later I tried to express in an email to her how much I admired her unique talent for describing what lurks just beneath the surface of daily life.

I'm so glad now that I sent those messages while she was here to receive them. Like many, I hadn't realised how sick she had become until very recently, hearing her husband William McIness speaking of it on the radio, and her death seemed very sudden.

As McInnes said, she was incredibly courageous. But so is he, I think. It is rare to hear someone talk so openly about their love for their partner and her bravery in facing her own death.

After seeing My Year Without Sex, I interviewed Sarah (over the phone) for a profile piece for The Big Issue. She told me that all of her work is about “the most basic stuff of life. How you get through your day; how you find meaning.” She was interested in the way we absorb the precariousness of existence — “the randomness of good fortune and catastrophe”.

Sarah had all the difficulties and distractions common to women artists, as well as profound struggles with grief and illness. But despite that she stayed very true to the art she wanted to make. Her art and films are bursting with heart, with her over-active imagination, her steely eye, her playfulness, great sense of the absurd and anxiety-fuelled whimsy.

Few artists have made work that has affected me like Sarah Watt's. I am already grieving the films she might have made next. It was just luck that allowed me to meet her in person.

After hearing that Sarah had died, I re-visited our conversation in The Divided Heart. For all who fear their domestic, suburban lives are not the stuff of art, let Sarah Watt be your inspiration.

Just Kids: the book Patti Smith hoped people would read and say was good

I have long been an admirer, if not an actual fan, of Patti Smith. Musically, that brand of New York punk has always left me a bit cold, though I am in awe of its spunk and its energy, and also the poetry at its heart. In truth, I have always felt faintly overwhelmed by Smith, as one of its gutsiest performers.

So when a friend convinced me to read Just Kids, Patti Smith's memoir of her affair with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, I wasn’t expecting it to really speak to me.

How wrong could I have been? This book moved me to tears. Buckets of them. And not just because of the tragedy of Mapplethorpe’s early death — though that made me terribly sad — but because it really shook me up. It was cathartic reading.

Some might enjoy her story for its picture of the New York art scene in the 1970s, which was pretty out there and full of amazing characters. But for me, what was really moving about this book was its story of profound connection between two people, both of whom epitomise artistic integrity.

Reading about the relationship between Smith and Mapplethorpe, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that they were fated to meet. Their relationship was intrinsic to their development as artists — especially for Smith, I think, as the less overtly ambitious of the two. Though I suspect she would have found her way, her confidence as an artist was much more fragile than his, and he gave her huge amounts of encouragement and belief.

Whatever drew them to each other, their initial encounters were certainly uncanny. Mapplethorpe was really the first person Smith met when she moved to New York — albeit briefly, until by sheer coincidence he again turned up to save her from an awkward situation — and became arguably the most important.

What also strikes you about them is the egalitarian nature of the relationship. He was domestic and nurturing, and in a scene peppered with phonies, they had a true meeting of minds.

There is no doubt that Smith and Mapplethorpe were innately talented, but her story reminds you that creativity is largely about commitment and passion. Their devotion to their work — and to living creatively — is all the more inspiring because they are both so unpretentious about it.

Perhaps what surprised me most about this book was its lack of cool; as Smith says, they were “too busy trying to pull enough money together to buy lunch” to be conscious of making a grand political or cultural statement.

Though their sexual relationship couldn’t last — Mapplethorpe eventually settled on his homosexuality — their connection retained its purity. It was deeply romantic and it sustained them both.

As you may already know, Smith is pretty legendary among mothers for letting her career take a backseat for a time while raising her daughters. As her much-adored husband died not long after Mapplethorpe, she also spent those years dealing with enormous grief, something she says has "put her on another plane" far more than mysticism or even intelligence.

After her album Gone Again was launched, and before she had written Just Kids, a 50-year-old Smith said: I'm very proud of my new record, and I wouldn't put it out unless I was. The last thing I want to do is inflict a piece of mediocre art on the planet. But I've also, as a single mother of two children, got practical reasons I've never had to consider before. I still have a part to play in rock 'n' roll, and I'll do that, but I'd love to write a book that people would read and say was good.

I read that book. And, yes, it was 'good'. But it was also so much more than that.

Birth art... but not as we know it

When Jasmine Proust and Tilly Morris asked if I would launch their exhibition, Birth.Art (as featured in The Age on Saturday), I trusted them enough to say yes. But a terrifying vision of purple pastel mandalas and pregnant goddesses did flash through my mind...

Thankfully, my worst fears haven't been realised (not that there isn't a place for a bit of pastel power on occasion...). In contrast, I'm loving just how edgy and witty the Birth.Art works have turned out to be.

As Tilly says:
This show has it all; from rude plants to fluorescent private parts, from inter-species breastfeeding to the theatricalities of the most common birthing arena in the Western world – the hospital.

Come and celebrate birth in all its glory. Argue with theologians and atheists, adopt a possum baby, drink some wine...

Birth.Art
ACU Gallery, 52 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne
Launching Tuesday June 14 (6-8pm), runs until June 30 (Wednesdays-Sundays 12-5pm)

Music, my love

I wonder if all artists are secretly (or not so secretly) envious of artists working in other art forms. For me, it’s music. As someone who writes and occasionally paints/draws, I am always conscious of music’s greater power; of its innate capacity to transport in a way that all other art forms aspire to but rarely attain.

Like so many people, I feel profoundly deprived in not having a good singing voice. I play the piano, and that’s lovely, but it’s not the same as being able to use your own body as your instrument of expression.

Recently I went to see Jen Cloher and Jordie Lane at my local, the Thornbury Theatre. Since then, Jen Cloher has been rocking my world. (Jordie already had a hand on the cradle.)

I’d heard Cloher on the radio a couple of times before this, but it wasn’t until I saw her live that I was properly switched on to her music. I’d forgotten how good seeing a someone perform live is for finally “getting it”, whatever it is a performer has to give.

In the case of Cloher, it was a revelation. How rare to see that combination of ferociousness and vulnerability.

I am now in that heady stage of infatuation with her latest album, where I just can’t get enough of it. I know that intensity will pass, but right now she’s singing the words that I need to hear.

When I listen to Cloher’s songs I get that absurd sense of disbelief that no one has written them before now; how is it that something so perfect would not have existed, would not have been made tangible if this person hadn’t been there to create it?

This thought always triggers a wild mix of gratitude and melancholy in me. The kind that has me pulling over to the side of the road and just taking in a big deep breath. Because I can. Because I've been given a life.

Ain’t that the wonderful thing about art: that strange sense of cathartic relief that comes with hearing/viewing/reading something that releases you; that reminds you why art is essential to the self.

How can you describe the effect great music has on us? I don't have the words. I just know what I feel: that music shatters you just as it makes you whole.

I killed the bird
With the bird
Killed the song
With the song
Killed myself
(Jen Cloher, "Birdsong")

From one mother to another

I have had a number of readers contact me almost apologetically to tell me that they initially avoided reading The Divided Heart because they had assumed it would be a negative take on motherhood when they enjoy having kids so much.

Fortunately, they have come to read it anyway — because it was recommended to them, or in one case because she was on the judging panel for one of those many prizes it didn’t get.

So it is lovely when someone gets in touch to say the book defied their expectations. And even more exciting when someone tells me the book inspired them to get moving with their own work, or even fed directly in to their art.

One example is this fab-sounding exhibition at the University of Florida. Four Squared is an exhibition by four artist-mothers and their experiences of making art amongst the chaos of raising young children.

Motherhood is also the theme of their art – “the push & pull of motherhood, domesticity and creativity. It is work created on an emotional rollercoaster, while burning the midnight oil, with the use of favours from friends, with the constant awareness of dishes to be washed.”

Most recently I was contacted by Iranian-born, British-raised, LA-based photographer and mother, Parisa Taghizadeh. She has made a series of works entitled “Mother”, one of which is in an upcoming show in New York, MOTHER/mother at the A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

MOTHER/mother is an exhibition of work made by artists from around the world within the years immediately following a pregnancy or the birth of a child.

If you are lucky enough to be visiting the US over the coming months, these shows look well worth a visit.

Just the other day, I came across a review of The Divided Heart that ran in the April issue of Art Monthly (check out the great cover!). Reviews by artists always make me nervous, so it was great to read Denise Ferris’s comment that the book made her feel “uplifted”.

“This book normalises the mother and artist combination by presenting women who continue to practise their craft in spite of social or their own confused expectations to choose one role over the other,” she writes.

“These women have continued to make work in spite of difficult personal experiences, and in spite of potent mixed emotions, self-doubt, confusion and exhaustion. To continue to work as an artist is not always as seamless as we hope. And that is the reality presented in this book.”

One criticism, though, was the lack of single mothers and gay parents in the book. Funnily enough, there are both in The Divided Heart. Perhaps it’s an indication of just how universal the issues around art and motherhood are that this wasn’t more obvious.

A portrait of the artist as a mother

I hoard my clean washing (note I say ‘my’, meaning ‘my family’s’, hmm…) till it reaches a pile big enough to justify a night spent folding it in front of the box — which in my case, not having a telly, means a DVD on the computer.

Having finished the first series of Mad Men — and since this week’s pile had grown to a size equalling a full feature-length movie (see how fun it can get?!) — I decided to watch Alice Neel, a haunting documentary about this extraordinary American painter.

Neel made portraits — of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and ordinary people... anyone who crossed her radar — infused with emotional intensity, her sitters challenging the viewer with their direct gaze.

I actually wrote a long section about Neel in The Divided Heart, which was cut out in the final edit. Embarrassingly, my first draft of the book came in at over 120,000 words, more than double that requested by the publisher, so there was plenty of material left on the cutting-room floor, so to speak, much of it investigations into women artists I admire.

As a woman and single mother, Alice Neel (1900–1984) did it tough, but remained utterly dedicated to her art.

The question of whether her obsessive devotion to painting — and the instability that came with that — was to the detriment of her children becomes the unintentional focus of the film, which was made by her grandson, Andrew Neel.

Neel spent much of her life on welfare and was isolated as an artist until the late 1960s and 70s, when the women’s movement embraced her.

In the film she says: “I always felt in a sense that I didn’t have the right to paint because I had two sons and I had so many things that I should be doing and here I was painting.

“… I wanted everything. I didn’t want just art; I wanted everything. Everyone wants everything but then they have to get practical and settle for a certain amount. But maybe I was never that practical.”

Neel lost her first two children, one through death, the other taken from her for complex reasons. These traumas permeated her work, its themes of motherhood, loss and anxiety, for the rest of her career.

In the film, her remaining, adult children have a complex relationship with Neel — loving her as a mother and friend, full of admiration for her work, and yet both nursing hurts that have profoundly shaped them as people.

“I don’t like bohemian culture,” her now very right-wing son, Richard, says. “People are hurt by it. I was hurt by it. People who are engaged in it don’t care about, or feel responsible for, those who are around them, or who depend on them.”

Her second son, Hartley (now a doctor), was badly abused by one of Neel’s long-term partners, and Richard’s father, communist intellectual Sam Brody. It is not stated directly but is suggested that Neel ignored this abuse because she desperately needed Brody’s belief in her as an artist at a time when her work had fallen out of public and critical favour.

And yet, through all his sadness, Hartley has the insight to say: “If she had been satisfied with the paragon of what women were supposed to be in her era, she would have accomplished nothing. She might have been the greatest mother and housewife and all that… [but] this was the other side of the coin in terms of the way Alice saw things. She didn’t want that stuff.”

By the end of this, I tell you, my washing was neatly folded but my heart was a complete shambles.

Art, money, family, life...

Who else noted Sonya Hartnett's answer in The Age yesterday when asked if she keeps a diary? "No. Like Truman Capote, I am physically incapable of writing anything for which I won't get paid" was her answer. Hmmmm. Am I jealous? Yes. Very.

For me there is still a stark contrast between the writing I do for money and the writing I do for myself, i.e. that I love.

In one of the repeated conversations I have with my partner on the subject of our mutual creative frustration (he music, me writing/art), the one thing that differentiates us is that he is not currently in a position to make money from his music, which he does around the edges of full-time work. And in a way, that has its own freedom.

I, on the other hand, feel a constant tug-of-war between writing for money (freelance articles etc) and writing for myself (short stories etc), both done on top of my part-time day job.

These questions of how/where art fits within a family dynamic are an area of constant fascination for me. How do you calculate what's 'fair' between couples, especially where children, a lack of money and a need to make art (or pursue any passion) are in the mix? To me, this matter is endlessly complex and fraught.

From a feminist perspective I also find it humming with ambiguities. Are there areas of life where women still benefit from the persistence (even resurgence) of traditional arrangements--the assumption that men will be prepared to work full time, which gives some women a certain freedom of choice about when and in what form they will work?

I am aware that it would be hugely controversial for my partner to say that he is giving up work to make music full time and to hell with the consequences. Whereas I can imagine my women friends, at least, applauding me if I were to make the same declaration. And yet, there are times when I would love to swap--he work part time, me full--but, for all his support, I don't entirely trust that he could really take over the rest. The cooking, cleaning, the pick-up and drop-offs... the holding of a thousand little threads that keep this household operation ticking over.

I have a lot of female friends around me whose creative lives are in a sense supported by their partner's willingness to be the reliable breadwinner. I think this is an enviable position to be in--though that's not to take away from the amount of work these women do around the home, in terms of housework and caring for kids, which is in itself a full-time job.

I am not going to attempt a review here, but Susan Johnson's novel Life in Seven Mistakes has some extraordinary passages on this theme, as does her memoir, A Better Woman, which I quote in The Divided Heart. The trajectory of the conversation (page 211-212) between the main character Elizabeth, a potter, and her husband, a wannabe filmmaker, is so familiar to me as to be painful to read. "Are you going to give up making pots and get a real job so I can give up work to become a genius filmmaker?" he asks her. Ouch.

Also a compelling read on this theme is Wendy James's wonderful novel, The Steele Diaries, about a woman who as a child was adopted by patrons of her famous parents, both obsessively driven artists working in the 1930s. In it, there is a letter from mother to daughter (I have lent the book to someone, so can't tell you the page number, sorry) that powerfully sums up the situation for a woman artist who cannot reconcile her maternal and creative selves, particularly in an era where women artists had to show their capacity for single-minded determination in order to be taken seriously. I hope that much has changed.

Oh, and you must go and see Sam Mendes' masterful new film, Revolutionary Road, for a truly devastating picture of what can happen to a woman who needs more than a domestic life.

Who Does She Think She Is?

I was lucky enough to be sent a preview screener for the US doco I mentioned in my previous post, Who Does She Think She Is?, and I can tell you I pretty much sobbed my whole way through it. I found it incredibly moving—saddening, inspiring, galvanising all at once.

All of the women featured in this film are particularly impressive in their strength and determination to keep their art at the forefront of their life, despite the personal risks and in some cases the devastating fallout, particularly for their relationships.

It brought to mind writer Brenda Walker’s comment in The Divided Heart that in trying to be artist, mother, worker and wife, something had to give—and it wasn’t going to be her child, her writing or her job (which she needed to pay the mortgage)...

In the documentary, some husbands were generous supporters of their partner’s work. Others wanted a wife, in the traditional sense, and were threatened by their partner’s creative success, or the way it took her away from the family. As one of those featured suggests, as a woman art takes you to places that are not safe.

I was particularly taken with the work of sculptor Janis Wunderlich. On the surface, her life is one of domestic normality—a Mormon with five children and a husband—yet she manages to have between 10 and 15 shows a year. Her phenomenal sculptures show women beset by mischievous creatures with rabbit ears clambering across her body, or sometimes birthing one child as others hang from her arms and shoulders. She puts her stress and conflict into her work, she says, so that she can stay sane in her day-to-day life. Her work is done in such a frenzy (placed in galleries before it gets broken around the house!) there isn’t time to look back and assess her work before moving onto the next thing.


She is a great example of the way motherhood allows women to avoid the trappings and vagaries of the art market—or at least the ‘art scene'. Here are women making art on the kitchen table while the kids nap or draw at the table beside them. Beyond the need to make a living, these women remind us of what the artistic imperative is really about—an unstoppable force that must be heeded or, as one said, “I go crazy”.

That said, they also continue to suffer for this, with statistics showing that women still don’t command equivalent prices to their male counterparts and represent a tiny percentage of solo shows in America’s major galleries.

Perhaps the most powerful story here is that of Máye Torres, who decided she and her three kids could live on US$24,000 a year if she lived as self-sufficiently as possible. Her struggle to be both mother and artist has meant guilt, divorce and a struggle to be taken seriously. But her incredibly articulate and caring children are a great testament to her; their recognition of her needs as an artist and their pride, admiration and respect for her almost brought me undone.

I read a scathing review of this film in Time Out New York recently, which accused it of encapsulating “everything that gives feminism a bad name, from whining about patriarchal society to celebrating the goddess within”. Isn’t it fascinating the way some women react so vehemently against this theme, offended that artists-mothers might have the audacity to make a special case of their situation? Anyway, rather than repeat myself, you can check out my response here.

As I said in my Time Out rave, clearly we as a culture still have a long way to go in understanding what can often be subtle, almost indefinable barriers for contemporary women artists—their own fear that their creative compulsions make them ‘bad’ mothers being one of the most powerful and complex. And as this film shows, artist-mothers’ stories are a great way in to some of the big questions we all face about how we live and what we choose to value in life.

Will keep you posted on local screenings...

Some random thoughts on the nature of genius

It’s been a while (sorry) and I find myself sitting down to write full of a jumble of random thoughts.

Firstly, yesterday I heard a fascinating interview on Radio National (yes, I am one of those annoying RN junkies who starts sentences with these words on an all-too-regular basis) with Australian filmmaker Scott Hicks about his new documentary about composer Philip Glass.

The interviewer, Jason Di Rosso, mentioned the tension within Glass’s marriage about his workaholism. Which raises the question, Di Rosso said, of “the nature of obsessive personalities, the ethics of living a life dedicated to the muse”. He used the notion of a ‘selfish gene’ to describe the artist who is driven “and sometimes that singular vision can be to the detriment of those around him”.

According to Hicks, when going into his latest marriage and having children, Glass was frank with his wife about where his dominant energies would lie. “So people make a choice about what they want to be involved with. What he does is what he does. He doesn’t really think about it as work. He works all the time … It’s just what he does.”

Using Bach, who had 17 surviving children, as an example, Hicks said: “Mrs Bach’s story would be a very interesting one I’m sure, because there was a man obsessed for sure.”

At our talk last weekend at the Northern Notes Writers Festival, where about 30 women and one brave bloke had a fascinating and very comprehensive discussion on the art and motherhood theme (thanks for the chat, those who were there), artist Sarah Tomasetti said she'd always experienced a level playing field, where male and female artists had the same opportunities—until she had children, that is. For so many contemporary women, having a baby is the point when feminism starts to make sense.

Inequality is not always about overt discrimination (though that continues, unfortunately). As a male artist like Philip Glass, that choice “about what he wants to be involved with” doesn’t rule out having children, though his predominant focus may be elsewhere. No matter how far we’ve come, could this ever be true for a woman?
It is an ultimate taboo for a woman to neglect or abandon a child for the sake of her vocation (and historically very few women make this choice, despite the notorious examples), yet the numerous male examples are largely ignored as nothing out of the ordinary.

There was an ABC doco recently about an artist featuring interviews with his children (can someone jog my memory re: the artist’s name?!). Anyway, I didn’t see it (we don’t have a telly), but I was chatting to a (female) art magazine editor a few days later who scoffed at his kids’ complaints about being ignored by their distracted father, saying they should have been grateful just to be in the midst of such greatness. Hmmm, what a question…

I was also approached after a talk by a mother of five who was the daughter of a famous painter and an artist herself. She had decided to give up her art until her kids had grown up, she told me, as she didn’t want to be the kind of parent her father was—with a mind always elsewhere.

So if a woman artist chooses to be involved with both her work and her children, does this dictate the kind of artist she can be? Almost certainly. But does this exclude her from the realm of genius—of “truly original” creation—as Hicks describes Glass’s work? In other words, does genius require the kind of single-minded obsessiveness that a loving mother cannot afford, at least while her children are small? Or are these male artists just having their cake and eating it too—because they can, because they have a Mrs Bach in the wings? (And good on Scott Hicks for mentioning how fascinating her story would be!)

P.S. If you want to read a great book on this theme, check out Wendy James's The Steele Diaries, which I will review properly in a future post...

A message for anyone who comes across this blog

I have set up this blog because a few readers of my book, The Divided Heart, have suggested that they'd like a way to link up with other readers and share their responses to the book, or just chat about their experience of being both artist and parent.

There are lots of great blogs out there written by creative mothers making links with other women, so another one might not really be needed. But it also does give me a chance to thank all the people (women and men) who have approached me over the past month and talked to me about what the book has meant to them. I didn't know, when I wrote this book, whether it would strike a chord out there, and it is extremely humbling and gratifying to feel that it is actually speaking to lots of readers who are also trying to work out how to keep their creative needs and desires at the forefront of their lives amid the huge (and also very worthwhile) demands of parenting.

So big thanks to all those readers who have approached me to thank me for writing the book, or to tell me about their lives. I hear so many fascinating stories--from those who have chosen to put off making art till their kids grow up; to those who have chosen not to have children for the sake of their careers; to those who are managing to make their whole lives, kids 'n' all, one big creative act.

I was on a Melbourne Writers Festival panel last weekend with my dear friend Clare Bowditch, the exquisite poet Lisa Gorton, and Catherine Deveny, who's a scream. She was really tough about this issue: "Put the writing (or other practice) first" was Catherine's message. And don't micro-manage your bloke--just point to your copy of 'Baby Love', chuck the phonebook at him, and let him work it out for himself. If there's a man (or another woman) on the scene, then you're a team. Don't make yourself the sole expert on what your baby needs.

In writing The Divided Heart, I have learned that mothers have to have extra gumption to say: "This is me; this is what I do", even if it means asking a lot of those around them--and at times feeling that they have to fight for their right to keep making art (often largely against their own temptation to admit defeat). But the ones who are managing to keep creating are the ones who are willing to give themselves permission, even if it means at times feeling overwhelming guilty about time away from their kids, or less money for their family.

There are also great benefits for the artist in becoming a parent; it gives you a big boot up the arse because you have so little time. Nothing better for helping you do away with the genius complex! No more faffing about, waiting for the muse to descend somewhere around the fifth latte--you just make use of every moment you've got, no matter how small.

The message from most of the artists in my book is: If you are conditioned to put the needs of others first, as so many women still are, then circumvent this conditioning and find a way to put your art at the forefront of your life. Carve out time for your practice (even one hour a night or early in the morning) and don't let anything get in the way of that sacred hour. It's too important! Give yourself permission to be an artist and others will just assume that's how it is. And your kids will get to grow up in a house where ideas and creativity thrive, and making and sharing is more important than consuming.

Art & motherhood at MWF

For a discussion on the challenges of being an artist amid the clamour and clutter of family life, join Clare Bowditch, Catherine Deveny, Lisa Gorton and me, at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Sunday at 4pm. For tickets, visit the MWF site here.

Check out Julie Szego's review of my book, The Divided Heart, published in The Age last weekend.

Or Jane Sullivan's column, which includes some devastatingly poignant words from American author Dani Shapiro about how frivolous writing can feel in the light of this very serious and important job of raising children.

And if you haven't had enough of me and/or the subject by then(!?!), playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, artist Sarah Tomasetti and I will be chatting with Elly Varrenti on Radio National's Life Matters program at 9am on Tuesday 9 September.