About a year ago I started photographing Anne Fay, my neighbour, now friend and fellow artist. I follow her with my camera as she moves between being a mother and being an artist — mothering while creating, creating while mothering. It’s a rhythm I know by heart, because I live it too. The term mother artist resonates deeply with me. It embodies this dual existence, the constant back-and-forth between care and creation, between being needed and needing space.

There are moments when motherhood feels like it gets in the way of making art. The responsibility of caring for another human being always comes first. The Creative flow, constantly interrupted by sleepless nights, short naps, scraped knees, school runs, playdates and the everyday rhythm of family life. Yet at the same time, motherhood is an endless source of inspiration. It changes how we see, how we feel, how we create.

The transformation a woman goes through when she becomes a mother, known as matrescence, fascinates me. In this ongoing project I try to explore how that transformation affects the artist within. I’m not only documenting the visible, practical side of being a mother artist, but also trying to look deeper, to understand how a rewired maternal brain and heart can shift perception, imagination and the way art takes form.

The stage of life we’re in now, and the fog of our mother minds, show up in how we work together. We rarely have a few quiet hours just for the work, but we speak almost every day and make the most of the time we get. We talk about ideas over coffee while the kids jump on the trampoline, or I suddenly get a message from Anne Fay: “I’m in the studio recording, can you come?” And then that depends on whether someone else can take my kids for a bit. Voice notes come in at six in the morning or late at night, and every hour in between.

We never run out of ideas, only time. But within that shortage there’s something full, something rich. The coffee flows, the conversations drift through the noise, and our shared love for art and motherhood gives us the energy to keep going, to stay awake, to keep creating.

And as you can read in this reflection on the mother artist, with this project I am not only witnessing Anne-Fay but myself as well.