Those who have have been lucky enough to bear a child may not be able to relate. Those who have longed for one, but never had the opportunity, live with a void. a void that cannot be filled. As I was completing this piece, the Today Show was playing in the background and gave the statistic that one in five American women, today, don’t bear children. It also said that for some this has been a choice. I find this hard to fathom. For me, there are no substitutes for the gift of real life motherhood. Not even the two best dogs in the world...

This piece emerged spontaneously. The first thing I saw in the wood was the eye. Before I detailed its form, I built around it and coaxed a heart form to emerge. Hearts are my thing!  As I started to fill the heart, an area off center remained blank. At first I thought it was starting to look like a heart within a heart. Later, I realized that it was, probably, something more. This form has appeared in earlier pieces. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but had to.

With everyone else’s problems being more important than my own, there has been little air time for my mid-life crisis and the pain it gives, not momentarily, but constantly. This piece, I realize, is painted in tribute to the wonderful single women friends n my life who are in similar positions. Our lament is huge, talent enormous, and recognition lacking. We would have made finer mothers than the many out there who make a mockery of that role with offspring as accessory, inconvenience, or object of abuse...

There is a comfort in knowing that you are not alone in a circumstance with which “outsiders” cannot identify, but this doesn’t help make it any easier.

Other works that have emerged earlier on a similar subject include:


Mother and Child: Dream or Reality (2005)

Mother/Child Unraveled (2006)