Jessica Valderrama, Mother and Child XIII
Jessica Valderrama (she/her)
Mother and Child XIII, 2020
mixed-media
5.5x7
With my Mother and Child series, I seek to liberate my expectations for myself and my art practice and find a more versatile visual language through a collaborative practice with my toddler. Feeling forced by new norms, forced back into the role of full time caregiver again, I have abandoned my more representational style of painting, debased my formal training and relied solely on my toddler’s whim and my strongly engaged reptilian brain. My toddler makes marks, we trace or print our hands and feet. I then intuitively layer color on top of these marks and outlines, choosing how much to leave exposed, pushing and pulling our figures, meditatively adding lines, color, revisiting a piece numerous times before reaching a final destination to our meanderings. Reminiscent of the Cave of the Hands, we mark time and space together in this way. What started as teaching my toddler how to trace hands has turned into a raw, intimate portrait of our mother and child relationship, our day to day during a pandemic, however chaotic, delicate, tiring or tender.
@jessicavalderrama.art