Christine Garvey Redefines Motherhood as Messy, Monstrous and Tenderhearted
Described as a “feminist ahead of her time,” 17th century Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi explored themes of motherhood, heroinism, and the male gaze. Now, hundreds of years later, artists like Christine Garvey study and reimagine her work through a modern lens, still captivated by the same themes.
In a series of illustrative drawings, the Austin-based multidisciplinary artist explores “anxieties around ruin and motherhood” by reinterpreting classical portraits of maternity. “My work from the last two years deals specifically with […] the transformation of flesh, the violence of birth, and the parasitic demands of the newborn,” she says. “It’s through copying and re-imagining various depictions of motherhood that I begin to find my own definitions. [I can then] come to terms with the complexity of such an experience—the violence and tenderness, the sensuality and fierceness, and the generative and destructive nature of making and mothering another.”
Comparing motherhood to a state of nature, wild and untenable, Christine leans into the “ugly” emotions that come with maternal love. Fascinated with the bleeding breasts in Artemisia’s “Mother and Child” and the elongated limbs in Parmigianino’s “Madonna with the Long Neck,” Christine creates her own rendition of monstrous motherhood in “Madonna and Child.” Her frantic mark-making flutters across the paper like an anxious heart, torn between powerful, conflicting emotions. Raw, broken bodies floating through fields of scribbled color illustrate the primal pain and messy beauty of giving birth, raising children, and loving them as they grow.
Using biblical, historical, and personal narratives to grapple with the experience of motherhood, Christine exposes the moment of transformation that ricochets through women as they become mothers. “I find something exciting in the idea that mothering brings forth the monstrous within each of us,” she says, alluding to the protective animal instincts of wolves and snakes. “I’m interested in the unusual power that emerges when we become our most grotesque, animate selves.”
New Book By Katie Love
From Cult To Comedy, A Memoir, by Katie Love
![Author Katie Love: The Comedian Turning Heartbreak Into Humor [Podcast] cover](https://notrealart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/KatieLove_TwoTickets_3480e51b580ddab4420c3075f139bc39_2000-400x209.jpg)
The year is 1970. The horror soap opera “Dark Shadows” is all the rage, the Vietnam War is raging and nine-year-old Katie, an imaginative and independent latch-key kid, comes home from school to discover her mother’s suicide.
Taken in by her older sister who has recently become a Jehovah’s Witness, Katie is shown an illustration from a bible picture book featuring wild animals peacefully lounging by a pool of water, surrounded by happy people picking fruit. An enticing offer is made: “Katie, this is Paradise. Do you want to see Mom again, happy and living forever? All you have to do is follow all of Jehovah’s commandments and you can be with Mom again.”
Mom happy and living forever? Two tickets to Paradise, please!
So begins Katie’s zealous quest to attain perfection and entrance into a utopian world which promises peace, love, and happiness. She discovers a much darker world. “Two Tickets to Paradise, from Cult to Comedy” tells the hilarious and heartbreaking story of an earnest, bible-toting kid intent on saving the world, and follows her metamorphosis into a boisterous comedian intent on saving herself through the healing powers of humor.
“I find something exciting in the idea that mothering brings forth the monstrous within each of us.” — Christine Garvey
Christine Garvey: Website | Instagram | Podcast
All photos published with permission of the artist(s).
Want to be featured on NOT REAL ART? Email editor@notrealart.com with a short introduction and a link to your online portfolio or three images of your work.
