Quietly Radical: Being a Creative Mama

Written By Gabrielle Szambelan

Written by Gabrielle Szambelan | 25 July, 2025

When I was 8 years old, I told myself I was an artist. I told my friends and family I would grow up and be an artist. I loved creating - whether it was a ‘cool’ drawing for my mum, reimagined fairytales acted out with my friends for class, or illustrated stories drawn on A4 paper and stapled into a flimsy book. I felt whole and good when creating and I never hesitated to do it. 

As I got older, this imaginative young version of me changed. Through the years, I filled the roles of budding artist, daughter, identical twin, sister, friend, student, and then later aunt, masters graduate, filmmaker, girlfriend, wife, lecturer, expat, film school bachelor leader and academic standards officer. Before long I also became an enormously proud mother of two. 

I remember a time before mama-hood hit when I thought I’d understood what close family meant when they said “think long and hard before having kids”. I convinced myself that I would be the same person no matter what motherhood threw at me. 

Now I realise that being a mum wasn’t about losing one’s previous identities or freedoms—it was about realising that there are many pieces to who I am and that motherhood simply meant expanding into something more. Becoming someone new while holding on to the core of who I’ve always been. The difficult thing was trying to make space for it all.

Motherhood brought both clarity and disruption. It deepened my capacity to feel, to love, to understand, to endure, to heal. It also made my time scarce, especially when I started to work again. My energy was fragmented, my body tired and this combination of trying to perfect all my roles stunted my creative process entirely.

Women’s time has always been interrupted. This statement kind of scares me, but it is so relatable. My creative time is borrowed, paused, kick-started. I often work in fragments—twenty minutes while the kids play, an idea jotted down while cooking dinner, a brushstroke in the quiet after daycare begins, a photo of something inspiring in nature while walking the dog. My work is slower now and maybe more challenging, but it’s more in-line with who I fully want to be, more honest, more thoughtful, more calm and more distilled.

And still, I sometimes hesitate to call myself an artist.

Because once you become a mother, it seems that the title of ‘artist’, or even any other job title for a mother, becomes optional. Secondary. Something you do “on the side” as a hobby.

Motherhood can eclipse a woman’s life but also enrich it. I want to push against the idea of a complete loss of self. I love being a mother—wholeheartedly. But I don’t want to be only that. Because I’m not. I am more. I want to be seen as a creative force in my own right—not because I am a caregiver, but because I make art that reflects the entirety of my lived experiences.

I want my work to hold space for the contradictions of this life—joy and stress, love and exhaustion, togetherness and independence, beauty and domestic grit. I want to paint not just around mama-hood, but through it—without being defined by it.

Academics like Rozsika Parker have explored this tension in The Subversive Stitch, showing how “feminine” arts have historically been dismissed or trivialized—especially when made in domestic contexts. Parker argues that art created by mothers has long been undervalued, often seen as mere “pastime” rather than cultural production (Parker, 1984).

That still rings true today. 

And yet, there’s something quietly radical about carving out space for yourself in a world that constantly asks you to give more.

My art is part of that space. It may not be grand or uninterrupted. But it is mine. And it matters—not because it’s made despite motherhood, but because it’s made alongside it and forms part of who I am, who I always was.

If you’re a creative parent—how do you hold onto your creative self? What helps you harmonise your various roles in life? What do you make in the margins? How do you remind yourself that you are still a creative force and that your voice still belongs?

Reference List & Bibliography

Books:

  • Parker, R. (1984) The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: The Women’s Press.


Articles

Gabrielle Szambelan