Fertility and Maternity Series:
It has been an awesome adventure this past year!
My husband and I have been through a lot trying to get pregnant these past 3 years. Along the way, I painted to express my feelings. I went through some challenges such as a loss, infertility testing and a minor surgery. After what felt like forever, we found out we were successful with a little boy! We had names picked out for both girls and boys long before this, and decided to keep our final choice a secret.
Painting the Fertility Series helped me work through some of my issues. I decided this was a great time to share my story with others who may be going through the same thing. I created a book with photos of the paintings and short paragraphs describing each one, which is available for purchase. This book idea sparked my Kickstarter project so I could fund a new series of paintings around the subject of Maternity. Kickstarter is a crowd-based funding website for creatives. My new painting series would be based on my own experiences of seeing my baby grow in the first few months of his life as well as the submitted stories of others' who backed my project. Raising money would allow me to bond with my newborn, staying home and painting with him. I would paint a custom piece of artwork to go along with each person's story and create a book, which would be one of the 'rewards'.
The project ended in May and I have now painted all 13 pieces for my backers as well as 6 of my own paintings. Here is a photo of me in the studio with Tiberius (yes, we did name him after a Roman Emperor).
Here is a picture of Ty & I in front of "Early Labor - Contractions", which I actually painted 9 months pregnant! It is 30" x 48" and I paint my Abstracts on the floor; imagine that : )
Here's my handsome boy at 8 weeks, modeling an NR Art custom tie.
To those of you who thought I couldn't paint new work and have a newborn at the same time, sorry to disappoint you. It hasn't been easy, but it can be done. My creativity has been booming...I just wish there were more hours in the day, and I had a personal chef & cleaning person!
Until next post,
Nicole
