In the Grass, With a Baby

Lee Nowell-Wilson’s drawings and paintings embody the tension between the mundane and divine that is embedded within daily domestic life. By weaving her own experience as a mother — repetitively practicing letters, cleaning messes, pouring imaginary tea — with the idea of “time as tapestry”, she explores how the cyclical plainness of each day reveals an understanding of sacrifice, habits, and growth.

With this work, Nowell-Wilson also incorporates elements of nature’s repetitive motifs in contrast with domestic patterns to trace how our spaces, both interior and exterior, know our habits and record the formation of our inner worlds. She compositionally references the works of historical artists, such as Manet and Vuillard, to point to the drastic difference between ideal romanticism and her everyday life. In doing so, she exposes a needed reconciliation that is only learned through the monotony of mothering.

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