Painting with Baby

Karen Winslow  "Self-Portrait with Daughter Annie"  1988

Karen Winslow is one hardcore mother-artist. While many of us will admit to the occasional quick session at the easel with a dozing toddler on our laps, very few people I know have done any painting standing at the easel with fully awake baby on the hip. Winslow, a contemporary oil painter based in Vermont, gets the Mother's Medal of Heroic Painting for this feat.  Winslow herself says of this piece, "This was painted in 1988, and my Annie is now married with kids of her own."

Katy Schneider  "Self Portrait with Olive and Easel"   1998

Katy Schneider also must be awarded the same prize for painting with baby in arms. Schneider is a contemporary painter based in Massachusetts whose work is concerned mainly with scenes of her own domestic life.  The mother of three children Schneider's small oil paintings are like amazing little snapshots in oil paint of her growing children and evolving family relationships. While Schneider's paintings show the particulars of her own life they somehow go beyond the individual and tap into a more universal consciousness of what contemporary life feels like to those experiencing it. 

Self-Portrait with Olive and Mae

Katy Schneider "Self-Portrait with Olive and Mae"  1997

Author Virginia Woolf famously discussed the necessity for a woman writer to have "a room of one's own," essentially, having the means and time to carve out a space in one's life for creative work. This is important for visual artists as well as writers. Contemporary New England painter Katy Schneider's studio space is in the basement of the home she shares with her painter husband and their three young children. While some might chafe at the restrictions imposed by such a space, Schneider has turned these limitations to her advantage, visually at least, creating small tableaux of modern family life, dramatically lit and chock-full of detail.