I was once a painter. I painted beautiful pictures and created magnificent artworks. Then I had children, and no longer had time to paint. Or so I thought. This is the book I wish I had had when my children were small. I took so many years trying to be an artist internally, while creating nothing externally. If I had read this book 18 years ago, I might have never stopped making art. I have attempted to find my rhythm again. This book has definitely helped inspire me to get back to it.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this ebook.

The Motherhood of Art by Marissa Huber & Heather Kirtland is filled with beautiful photographs and it tells us about mothers who struggle with their art while juggling motherhood. But it could have been inclusive of people from all kinds of financial backgrounds.

The struggle between motherhood, creativity, and art production is real and The Motherhood of Art tackles the subject head-on. Thoroughly enjoyed the insight of each of these working artist mommas provided in their interviews. The pictures were a nice touch as well. Would definitely recommend this book to any woman trying to find the balance between motherhood and the creative process.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

I actually enjoyed this book more than I thought I would after reading some of the reviews on it.
This book is a questionandanswer book about different female artists who work using different types of art and how they work when they have children, their struggles, how they deal with things ad fit in their work etc. It's interesting to read about each female as an individual and I loved seeing the art they do too.

Such lovely collection of photographs!!

I would like to thank the publisher for giving me a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was a little disappointed in this book, as I was expecting something different. As a mother of a two year old who works full time in a library but loves to be creative, I was hoping for a little more about balancing it all and finding inspiration. Although some of the pictures were nice, I found this a little boring to flip through and wish it had more depth. Most of these women were financially stable or supported by a husband so they could devote more time to their art.

Not what I thought this was going to be. Full of peoples stories of how they continued to create art with children at home. Was a little boring honestly.

The Motherhood Of Art by Marissa Huber and Heather Kirtland is a book that interviews artists who are also mothers. This book was not what I was expecting. Some of the pictures where beautiful and I did learn some new ideas but all in all the book was redundant.

As a creative mother of five who loves art, I had high hopes for this book. While there are aspects I like, there were also areas that left me profoundly frustrated.

For one thing, the authors seem to have merely emailed a series of questions to artist mothers and then printed the answers along with various photos of the mothers, their kids, and their work (or their spaces or works in progress). There really is such a difference when you take the time to interview people and interact with them. It really did feel like phoning it in (or emailing it in). The questions got redundant hearing the same ones asked of artist after artist. Sometimes the mothers had already answered a question in a previous answer and then answered it again. There was no opportunity for follow up. There was no personalization. It felt like reading 25 (at a guess, since I'm not sure how many mothers were profiled) very long survey answers.

Another big issue for me was that almost every mother profiled seemed to be financially quite stable. Almost all of them had studios, either rooms in their homes dedicated to their art (and such huge, beautiful ones!) or they paid for studio space. They frequently gave advice like the importance of paying for child care (one suggested paying for a "wet nurse" when you have a baby and I'm unsure if the definition has changed or this really meant pay someone else to breastfeed your baby). One said, "It takes a village that you have to pay for" regarding paying for classes and child care to occupy your children so you can create. One talked about carefree days with her kids at Martha's Vineyard. I do not relate to this, and I'm sure many modern artist mothers also do not.

There is diversity in ethnicity in the book (yay!) but not in any other way. I didn't see a single LGBTQ woman (or at least one who self identified). There was one woman who talked about her mental illness (she is bipolar) and that was a refreshingly real and honest profile, but most of the women were cisgender married women. One or two were divorced, but most seemed to be in relationships, often where their husbands/partners financially supported them. I did not notice any women with disabilities and there was no discussion about these sorts of issues. Most of the mothers had only 1 or 2 kids. The largest number of kids any mom had was 4, though that was only one mom.

The author also didn't ask the questions I'd want to ask, which would relate to what they actually do as artists and how they make a living off of it if they do. Every once in a while a clue would sneak out in an answer, like one mother said she sells a lot of her work through Instagram. For the most part, though, it's all the same kind of esoteric "lift each other up" kind of stuff -- what would you say to other mothers or yourself, have you doubted yourself, do you have guilt, what does flow mean to you.... I'd rather have the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty, the real stuff -- how do you do your art, and what helped you earn money at it (if you do)? They didn't even list the artists' Instagrams or websites, which I really was hoping for (I could not find them at the end in the resources, either).

There were times where the authors could have made it so much more by leading their voices and actually doing some work, too. For instance, they asked "are you self taught?" and another question about where the artists trained. So many of the moms said they didn't know how to answer the self taught question or disliked it. That could have made a great discussion point and the authors could have talked about how it's an outdated term -- all of the women had some sort of teachers (high school art teacher, relative, full masters program in art, classes on the side...) and all of them also considered themselves self taught. By not actually writing the book and just amassing all the answers in a row, there's no room for comparing their answers and talking about common themes.

One tidbit that several of the artists shared did emerge -- more than a handful suggested that the way to make it work with very young kids was to do art on a small scale. For some, that meant just 15 minutes and small in time. A few made it small in size, talking about a shoebox with ATC kind of art or tiny canvasses because it's easier to do small works and pack it all up. Again, that could have been such a cool subject to talk about instead of making the artists do all the work and the reader comb through 200 pages of survey answers to start to notice that common tip.

All in all, this was a good read and I did enjoy it. It's not a book that ultimately helped me or inspired me much, but I admire the mothers profiled and the careers they have built.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.