Motherhood comes with a lot of beautiful experiences and many responsibilities. It is a full-time job in and of itself. Coupled with the creative and organizational responsibilities of a professional artist’s practice, motherhood can become a source of inspiration and an initiative to see the world through a different lens.
As many women do, Caitlin Teal Price, a forty-two-year-old artist, who grew up in Washington, DC, and returned to The District in the early 2010s after studying photography at the Yale School of Art, balances what it takes to actualize artistic inspiration with the concrete responsibilities of being a mother.
Price’s work often reflects the humanity of her subjects, something that is evident in her breakthrough series of portraits “Stranger Lives” (2008-2015)which she made right up until having children. In this body of work, Price photographed strangers on two New York City beaches (Coney Island and Brighton Beach) from above, capturing her subjects in a languid state. Curator Dorothy Moss wrote that the work is, “beguilingly brilliant not only in its open approach to the individual but also in the ways the series conveys a sense of both personal freedom and communal experience. The body of work has a kind of leveling effect, reminding us of the way we are equalized and brought into community on a beach. The sand becomes a canvas for shared imaginings to the alluring, melodic sound of waves.”
We asked Price what had changed after having children and how she wanted the world to perceive a working mother. She explained,
“My work changed when I had children. I needed to find alternative ways to work. I no longer had the time and freedom to jump in my car for months at a time to travel around the country making pictures, like I did with my series Annabelle, Annabelle. I needed to find a way to work closer to home while surrounded by my family and children. I started looking at the world differently. And as a result, my practice and my work changed.”
Price’s current and ongoing series, “Scratch Drawings” signifies her shift as an artist, which was motivated by the constraints of becoming a mother. While working from her home studio she now incorporates the complexities of life into her pieces by adding drawing to her photographs. She utilizes quotidian objects and found photographs as inspiration for her abstract drawings which are executed by scraping away photographic pigment with an x-acto blade. This new practice within Price’s oeuvre accounts for the constraints of everyday life while investigating domesticity, routine, ritual, and play.
Price says “ Becoming a parent is not easy, and maintaining an artistic practice is especially hard with young children, but I want to encourage all artists and mothers to push through the messy parts and to keep making meaningful work throughout all phases of life.”
