by: Alex Blanco

Reading tip: Hold Still by Sally Mann: a memoir exploring the photographer’s life and work, preoccupied with family, parenthood, race, mortality, and life in the American South.

No one could write this article better than me. Not out of arrogance, but because I live it: every exhausting, beautiful, and chaotic second of it. This is the raw reality of an artist and a mother, a life stripped bare. A life where sleep is a luxury, four, maybe five hours a night if I’m lucky and where art is squeezed into the fleeting moments between feedings and short daytime naps. In fact, I’m writing this article in bed while my newborn sleeps beside me. At least, until his next feeding.

Left: Alex Blanco, Motherhood Photography, 2025 | Right: Jack Davison, A is for Ant, Children's Edition, 2024

I used to scoff when parents told me they had no time for themselves, let alone for art. “They just don’t know how to manage their time,” I’d think. “How can that even be possible?” Then, in 2020, I had my first child, and all my questions vanished, replaced by a single truth: You don’t have time. Not for art. Not for yourself. You’re lucky if you even brush your teeth tonight. Suddenly, Marina Abramović’s words, that choosing to have children would have been a disaster for her work, seemed brutally honest. But is it really that black and white? After all, Sally Mann, one of the greatest female photographers of our time, raised three children, who became central figures in her work. And what about Ruth Asawa? A modernist sculptor, a mother of six, and a member of the avant-garde community at Black Mountain College, her work now sits in the collections of the Guggenheim and the Whitney. So the question arises: Is it possible to build a successful artistic career without missing out on parenthood?

Left: Ruth Asawa and Her Children, 1957 | Right: Sally Mann, Jessie at 7, 1988, Gelatin silver print, Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

Musician Laura Marling seems to think so. “If you’ve ever been worried that your creativity will suffer if you have a baby, it won’t,” she said in an interview with AnOther Magazine. Reflecting on motherhood, she added: “I wouldn’t say that my creativity or my songwriting got better, but the circumstances around it became more perfectly aligned with getting stuff done and not second-guessing myself. This new crack in the icescape provoked the perfect conditions for songwriting.”

Sarah Moon, Little Red Riding Hood, 1983

Amy Woodward, Motherhood

Another artist, Vika Množina Hashimoto, whose work was featured in Eye Mama: Poetic Truths of Home and Motherhood, 2023 shared her perspective:

“It’s disappointing that the emphasis is on women ‘not wanting’ to sacrifice, rather than on the systemic structures that make being both an artist and a parent a constant struggle. Realizing what I’m up against as a mother made me very angry. Having a supportive partner helps—but how much space do they really have to support you? How much are they willing to prioritize your fulfillment as an artist?”

“That said, I have friends proving every day that yes, you can be both a mother and a successful artist. It takes relentless hard work and a bit of luck in creating the right circumstances. My art, photography, is particularly adaptable to having a child. If anything, it has given me new perspectives and creative growth. Watching human evolution unfold before my eyes is both inspiring and magical. It is also banal, mundane, exhausting, and maddening. My advice? Don’t waste energy trying to be the same artist you were before. Parenthood reshapes you. It made me both softer and tougher. It’s a gift.”

Vika Množina Hashimoto, Image from Eye Mama: Poetic Truths of Home and Motherhood, 2023

In her memoir Hold Still, Sally Mann offers a vital piece of advice for artist-parents: Live an ordinary and organized life. Keep your focus sharp. Don’t waste time obsessing over what to wear or what to cook—eliminate small decisions that drain your energy. Be practical, optimize your time. Mann also notes that, thanks to digital photography, it’s far easier now to shoot without the meticulous labor of silver-gelatin prints. “Take as many pictures as you can throughout the day,” she says. “Don’t be afraid of shooting excessively to get that one perfect image.” And funny enough, she adds, the hardest part of photography isn’t even choosing the right shot, it’s simply picking up the camera. The moment you lift it to your eye, you’ve already won a small victory.

Dutch artist Roos van Geffen, a mother of three, shares that since becoming a parent, her time and focus have been consumed by a dependent, vulnerable being who demands her full attention. Her artistic practice thrives on doubt, uncertainty, time, and an autonomous perspective on the world. In contrast, a child requires the opposite, creating a tension, especially in a society still shaped by outdated gender roles.

“Even though my partner and I equally divide household tasks, and he fully supports my work and residencies, the mental load of parenthood: organizing childcare, playdates, dentist appointments, and after-school care, still largely falls on me,” she reveals.

To succeed in both art and motherhood, her advice is to resist the urge to rush back to work and instead fully surrender to the undivided attention a newborn requires, at least for the first six months. “I wish I had done this instead of rushing back to work, pumping milk in my studio, and questioning the necessity of what I was doing,” van Geffen reflects.

She encourages parents to keep creating and to find ways to work in their children’s presence. “Even in stolen moments, you can create something. Your perception of time shifts; your time alone becomes more valuable, but also more precious. So, despite the exhaustion, use it wisely. Keep creating!" the artist concludes.

Christopher Anderson, Pia with balloon in Gracia, 2016

The truth is, being both a good parent and a great artist is damn hard. Almost impossible. But also entirely possible. Because when you’re pushed to optimize every second, you realize: If I can do all this on barely any sleep, I can do anything. Parenthood forces you to sharpen your time management and creative discipline like never before.

Annemarieke van Drimmelen & Jasper Krabbé, June, 2022

Many artists have embraced their children as collaborators in their work: Sanja Marušić, Andi Gáldi Vinkó, Sally Mann, and countless others. Some, like Lisa Sorgini and Amy Woodward, dedicated their practice to exploring the complexities of parenthood itself. Others create deeply personal projects about their children, like Christopher Anderson’s Pia and Son, or Annemarieke van Drimmelen and Jasper Krabbé's beautifully intimate book June which captures the innocent world of their two-year-old daughter. Some artists, after becoming parents, turn their lens toward childhood, like Jack Davison’s collaborative alphabet book A is for Ant and Sarah Moon’s reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood… The list goes on—just like the creative possibilities.

Lisa Sorgini from the project Terra Madre, 2024

Andi Gáldi Vinkó, from the book Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back, 2016-2022

Life with kids won’t make creating art easier. But discipline and razor-sharp time management will. So if you’re navigating the chaos of both art and parenthood, Godspeed.