Year created: 2017
Dimensions: 70 x 50 cm (28 x 20") — Height x Width
Medium & Materials: Acrylic on deep canvas, ink, and acrylic fluid
The painting is finished with a semi-gloss coat.

Not for sale.

This painting began somewhere I didn't expect. I was three months pregnant, and a scan had just told us our daughter might have Down syndrome. What followed was a month I still call "the black month" — deep depression, and a wave of people around me, even medical professionals, encouraging me toward a different path, framing what was ahead as something to fear.

My husband and I decided to go forward. And something in me lifted — I went back to painting, wanting, deliberately, to make something dark. Architectural. Concrete tones, with only the faintest touches of color.

Maternity had other plans. What emerged instead, layer by layer, was a mother and child, semi-abstract, faceless — instead, a line of light running between them, teal acrylic fluid and ink thrown instinctively to trace the connection I felt to her. Both of them held within a golden, divine glow. It was the first painting I made without brushes at all, using only palette knives, ink, and that thrown fluid. I didn't design it. I found it, the way I now find every painting.

Looking back, this is the piece that showed me how I actually paint. Before I had a name for it — before Viscerism — Maternity was already living it.

My daughter is nothing like the fear she was described as. She is smart, beautiful, healthy, and the greatest gift our family has ever received. I don't say this to argue against anyone else's path or choice — every situation is different, and I won't judge another mother's decision. But I do want other mothers facing this same fear to hear: instinct, love, and connection are more powerful than any warning. Trust that.