Sometimes, I just want to create art

I want to do all the things, no matter how tired I am, no matter what work I have on or how the kids are or what size of laundry mountain is piled up waiting for my attention. During last week I woke up with a jolt at five in the morning with an entire artwork planned out in my head. I could picture it so vividly I ended up getting up to sketch ideas quickly before I lost the sense of urgency.

I can still see it in my mind's eye, so clear and simple.

A week later I've started, every couple of days adding a layer, and am at the stage of hating it and questioning why I think I'm an artist anyway (and considering throwing it away and starting over). Only the knowledge of having been through this process before is keeping me from taking a tub of gesso to the canvas and using it for something else.

I'm in the tired, introverted days of my monthly cycle. I found myself wishing, a couple of days ago, that I could send the children off somewhere for a couple of days so that I could just make something. Instead, I took them on the train to Nottingham to tour the art galleries, and then spent an entire day building train tracks and winding the crank handle on the giant tape measure for a small child to pull it out again. And giving myself over to being overwhelmed and present and not flinching from it was enough. It was enough.

Both the laundry and the art will wait. They will. Some days they have to.

Today I'm taking my brush to the canvas again. It's okay if it sucks. Tomorrow it might be just what I thought it would be. This is where I am, today. Beautiful mess. Vibrant chaos. Colourful disarray. Mothering as art. Art as mothering. Documenting the whirl of it, the essential hurry-up-and-wait of it, the beauty and the soul of being here now.

**Exhibits pictured: La Source (demi-teinte) by Simon Starling (part of his exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary); Mother and son by Sam Rose, and below that, Nesting by Jessica Paige Greig (both part of Artist as Mother as Artist at the ncn Lace Market Gallery).**