Repositioning the Gaze: An Aesthetic of Care

This paper explores, from the subjective positions of mother and figurative painter, the connections and incongruences between the practice of painting and the care practice of mothering. It considers the temporal de-calibration that occurs when engaged in the processes of both practices to shift the focus away from a timely, finished product. Through embodied and autotheoretical lenses, it argues for a reconfiguration of the gaze to look outward from mothering in order to emphasize practices of attunement. It contemplates how artwork might make publicly visible the maintenance and emotional labour of being alongside an other, and posits that painting can be positioned as a form of documentation for the mostly invisible parts of mothering. It considers how engaging with paintings created from the perspective of those who practice care might trouble the boundaries between art and life, public and private, practice and product, and artist and mother.