Nap Time Paintings: Thoughts on Motherhood Through the Eyes of an Artist

By Jennifer Hynes

Meristems are the cells where tree growth occurs. Nap Time Paintings is the narrative of cohesive bonds between mother/artist, husband, children, and the writings and art that emerge from those bonds. This book represents, through writings and visual representations, the meristems of the growth of an artist and her family. What you hold in your hands is a close written and visual documentation of lives, an artist and mother, a father and husband, the new lives of their twin children, the satellite project of paintings and writings that grew from and orbited around a family for the past four years. The writings contained in this book discuss myriad subjects: nature, the passage of time, poopy diapers, insomnia, depression, and moments of great creative exhilaration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543455571

Jennifer Hynes

Jennifer Hynes is a painter and writer in the California Bay Area. In her studio, she works with water-based media, and she also does collage and printmaking. Hynes writes on a regular basis for her blog, dirtylaundryblog.com. As an undergraduate at California State, East Bay, she studied printmaking with Enrique Chagoya while also studying painting and sculpture. Hynes earned a post-baccalaureate degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she further explored printmaking and mixed media.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Jenny Hynes. 762938

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5434-5558-8

             Hardcover   978-1-5434-5559-5

             EBook           978-1-5434-5557-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 11/16/2017

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Contents

The Sycamore Tree

Naked Painting

Finding Balance, Raising Twins

Telling Stories

Spring

Infertility

Truckee

Family Life

Time

I Love You, Babies

Happy Birthday to Me

Black Coffee

First Birthday

Daisy Flowers

Dead Mole

Ocean Driftwood

Fig Tree

Subtleties in the Chaos

Lingering Longer and Longer

Staying Home

Got What I Needed Today

Mom

Line

Painting

Love Makes Us Real

Lemonade and P,B,and J

God Provides Us with What We Need

Blu Blu and Tiny

I’ll Love You Forever

Tennessee Valley Trail

Shattered Blinds

Grow My Tree

October

Nap Time

Jennifer’s Walk

Tired Body

Just a Housewife

The Beach Is the Place to Be

Nature

Motherhood

New Form

Danny and Me

Hiking

Memories

Bee

Throw Up Happens

Alan

Mendocino Forever

Boobs Bouncing

End of Nap Time Paintings

Now and Forever

A New Beginning

The Sycamore Tree

There is a giant sycamore tree on my street. I can see it from my kitchen window. It was planted in a five-gallon bucket the year we moved into our house. Today, it’s the tallest and widest tree in our neighborhood. In the summer, it’s full of dark green leaves. In the fall, they turn to yellow and then bright orange. In the winter, magnificent bare branches are exposed; where in the spring, tiny yellow finches cover the tree. In February, from my window, the branches still look bare; but when I walk by close, I can see tiny little leaves.

So many things in my life have changed since that tree was planted. Eight years ago, when I was training for my first Olympic triathlon, sweaty and with weak legs, I would ride my bike up our steep hill until I saw the still small sycamore tree. The year after that, I did my first IVF transfer, followed by disappointments, sadness, infertility treatments. The next year, pregnant, I relaxed, watching the tree; and then my first miscarriage, I recovered, watching the sycamore tree. Its leaves reach up into the fog this morning—air cool, a crow in the distance cawing, and clanging of recycling being dropped into big yellow trucks.

Jack and Fiona are still sleeping. When Jack and Fiona were born, I set up blankets on the deck where we could see the sycamore tree. They lay down—two chubby faced babies, next to each other, legs kicking, holding hands, so tiny compared to the giant Sycamore. My studio downstairs, waiting for me. There are no windows in my studio, it is under our house, built into the hillside, staying a cool 65 degrees all year long.

The first fall Jack and Fiona were alive, as the sycamore tree started to change, I felt like I was missing my cue. I wasn’t registered for any art classes; I wasn’t starting any new programs in school like I had every year of my adult life. I was a new mom; the tree reminds me of time passing, fall into winter into spring. Jack and Fiona growing up so fast, from babies to kids in the blink of an eye. The first several months were difficult. I needed my studio; I needed my creativity to grow like the tree. I started to get worn down after nights of constant feedings and diaper changes. I was missing my classes, my painting. I didn’t know how much I was changing and growing or how much the experience of motherhood would affect my studio time until recently.

The lifespan of Plantanus occidentalis, the American sycamore tree, is more than two hundred years. The tree will be here long after we are gone. I think about that, our short time on earth. I first started back in my studio after the babies were six months old. It felt like a long time had passed. I started getting very depressed. At first, I tried to get large chunks of time in my studio, like I was used to from my life before becoming a parent. It was difficult to get much time; I was frustrated. It took me several months to develop a new technique that worked. I learned that even if I only had an hour or thirty minutes, it was worth it.

I started working on my nap time notebooks and paintings. I focused on spontaneity. I left my critical mind out of the studio. I’ve grown as an artist this way—with these restrictions. I shed my leaves and grew back new ones, used what time I do have instead of thinking I don’t have enough time—inspired and grounded by the sycamore tree. Memories are imbedded in that tree; it is a keeper of the past and a beacon of years to come.

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Nap Time Notebook Series 2017

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Nap Time Notebook Series 2017

Naked Painting

I’m ready to paint. First, I clean up from yesterday. My studio is a mess. My paintings are a mess, overworked, and ambivalent. I know what I want—the feeling, the feeling of passing time, moments we never get back, a ritualistic chant that crosses boundaries and goes deep inside, scooping out that childlike freedom of creation; embedded with the pain and loss of adulthood; alive with the knowing that this is all temporary, like one magical gust of October wind, with the slight chill, reminds us that the earth can open like a crevice and take us back into herself, like a baby returning to the womb. We turn into dust like the disintegrating moth on the kitchen windowsill; layers of paint creating this history in front of me, leaving a memory behind me. But what is now? I grab paint, medium, a brush, and palette and try to enter that space; childlike and adultlike simultaneously, trying to not overthink, trying to remain in the ritualistic chant Fiona taught me last night.

I can’t remember why we were naked, it was after Jack and Fiona took their bath, I guess they just decided not to get dressed. I was wearing a sports bra, and nothing else.

I just want to do one thing, I say to Jack and Fiona.

OK, they say, and follow me into my studio.

Alan was upstairs watching T.V., waiting for me, waiting for Jack and Fiona to take their nap. But Jack and Fiona didn’t take their nap. They were wide awake and stimulated from our morning, which included a trip the pumpkin patch, lunch and the ice cream store. It was already after 2:00 p.m. when we got home.

I started by drawing on my canvas, adding some collage, mixing blue ink for Jack and Fiona to play with. They start off slow. Jack came and went, taking breaks to play with his trucks in his room. Fiona stayed with me the whole time. We