This site is an experiment. It’s an attempt, undertaken in the thick of pregnancy, birth, post-partum and child-rearing, to pull together the fragments and find out what is essential for my art-life today.
This is not just a portfolio site. My goal is to document the work I’m making right now—the work I am able to make, and the life experiences surrounding those artifacts. This may feel something like a studio-visit—only my studio is, for now, situated on the edge of my nursing-chair, lit by a floor lamp: a few small bins and sneaky little pouches of supplies skillfully hidden from prying fingers, a table easel rarely bothered with, stacks of drawing paper, primed boards, and piles of my treasured books.
A Different Kind of Art Life
I love making big, bold, crazy drawings and paintings that fill up the wall of my studio, or little pieces that stand out like neat jewels in a gallery show. I love working obsessively all night to master a commission for a client; or days upon days eating, sleeping and breathing an idea that I have to get out. I love spending hours pouring into students, trouble-shooting their work, coaxing them gently into their own epiphanies, and being edified by their openness and progress.
I have loved every minute of my life before becoming a mother. Yet things are different now. Moving into the vocation of marriage and motherhood has been the greatest challenge of my life. Now all the energy, love, passion, searching and strength I have to give goes into my children. This is the most difficult and all-consuming creative effort I have ever undertaken, both mentally and physically. I started my family at the approach of mid-life. Now, as of this writing, I’m holding my four-month old between my legs, while my three other small children sleep in their crib and beds nearby.
Where does art fit in? It has to, somewhere, because art is a part of me. It calls to me, and although my childrens’ voices are louder, I can’t ignore it entirely. I don’t make art to make a living these days, I make art to feel fully alive.
At one time in my career, I aimed for a standard of professionalism that discouraged me from discussing my personal life, especially my faith, in the same venues where I talked about art. But today, plunged deeply into this domestic sphere, there is no way to separate my art from the faith that sustains me through these trials of motherhood, marriage, love, pain, growth, sickness, loss, fear and the approach of the final things. If I pretended these domains were separate for me, I would be pretending to be something I’m not.
Should an Artist Talk?
Ever since I began documenting my portfolio online, way back in 2007, I wrestled with the tension between writing about my art and letting art speak for itself. I kept my portfolio site sparse. Artist-run websites were a new animal, and there was a real question among fine artists of my generation as to whether having a website would cheapen the value of the work, or compete with the interests of the brick and mortar galleries.
I forged ahead, and was the only person I knew of in my graduate school at The Pennsylvania Academy to have a website for my art. The question that bothered me then was whether I should use it as a platform for communicating verbally about my work—or anything else.
I love language, poetry and literature. Back in college, one of my first painting professors, Riley Brewster, predicted my difficulty in harmonizing my love of communication with the silent, solitary world of painting. He recommended I keep a journal, which I have done and still do. Many of the images I post here are lifted from my art journal.
Rather than shrink away from the sometimes embarrassing task of writing about my art and life, and thus mentally pulling the pieces together into one coherent body of thought, I would rather use this chance to practice and develop my skills. If for no other reason, I do it for my mental health and as a record for my children to enjoy.
I hope you enjoy it, too, and find it encouraging. Please feel free to reach out to me with your comments.
Latest Posts:
- EpiphanyLight is the theme of the day. I love the way fire looks in the grey half light of a winter afternoon around the Puget Sound where I’m from. These grey days with their low clouds can feel oppressive. Bleak winter days can seem to go on forever, making our load seem heavier, doubling our… Read more: Epiphany
- The Horror of Being EmbodiedI’m not sure how to do this. It feels out of place for me to put material about my physical health journey in the same venue as where I deal with art. But again, the concept of this website is to bring all those parts together into one place. As a mother of four, entering… Read more: The Horror of Being Embodied
- What Blossoms in a Children’s GraveyardWe visited the cemetery today, as is our custom, since November is the month of the Holy Souls, and this week is the Octave, and you get an indulgence for going there to pray for the dead. I don’t think I would much want to go—I’m pretty lethargic these days; can’t seem to clean the… Read more: What Blossoms in a Children’s Graveyard
- Stellamaris SitsToday I did something new: I asked my daughter, Stellamaris, to sit for a portrait. It was a modest, quick little thing. A pencil sketch. It’s not like I haven’t made plenty of portraits of her—of all my kids. Many hours my pencil has chased my little ones while they play, dashed off sleeping baby… Read more: Stellamaris Sits
- Art and Salvation?When I was in graduate school at the Pennsylvania Academy, a cheeky philosophy student from Temple University said to me: “Art is great and everything, but it won’t save your soul.” Well, I believed him at the time, but I beg to differ now. In his papal Letter to Artists, the late St. John Paul… Read more: Art and Salvation?
Michael Shelby Suberlak 