Blue & Gold 2016 - Christine Olmstead

Blue & Gold

2017

This series was made inspired by my piece "North Gold." This series is limited to a blue and gold palette.

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Life lately 🙂‍↔️ Joel and I tallied it u

Life lately 🙂‍↔️

Joel and I tallied it up. This year we gutted our primary bathroom right before I had my home birth. Our bathroom was functional just before baby came and it was finished about a month later.

2 months later we replaced the roof.

And now we are replacing all of the windows, siding and decks on our house all while baby is teething her top two teeth and crawling everywhere. We are one month into this renovation and thankfully the weather has been nice cause we’ve been spending a lot of time outside to flee the construction mess. About 1 month left to go. I feel a little bit crazy 🤪

Oh and Joel’s sister moved in just before we started construction.

Not pictured is the mountain of renovation trash in my driveway 🫶

Sometimes I get angry or beat myself up for not getting more work done but then I remember I’m 8 months postpartum, I’ve been living in a construction zone since 2 weeks before birth and I’m still managing to keep my baby thriving - surpassing all milestones - and I even released a series in motherhood. I’m doing fine. ✌️
#artistatwork #doitfortheprocesspodcast #momma

✨ People say time is a thief - I think time is a

✨ People say time is a thief - I think time is a jeweler binding us together in golden moments of light and dropping gems of memories to make life sparkle. ✨

Just me and the babe, plugging away in the studio.

I think pain demands to be felt. It keeps score.

I think pain demands to be felt. It keeps score.

I think this is true of physical pain as well as emotional pain. I think if when you are in pain and you don’t look directly in its eyes, hold its hand, and let it move through you then you will bear the consequences of its rejection. It will find your weaknesses, whether physical or emotional and eat you alive cell by cell.

You cannot run from it by changing your life, your job, your partner. You cannot numb it with a pill or a drink or an obsession. You cannot hide from it by pretending to be someone else. You can’t pray it away or be saved from it.

Pain that is not felt morphs into an ugly monster and becomes disfigured into chronic illness, addictions, explosive anger etc…

I think some emotional pain transfers to physical pain and vice versa. I think pain is our friend if we let it be and if we embrace pain it will carry us to higher highs and deeper depths than we can imagine.

Pictured: “Wherever You Want To Grow” #1 and #2

#artistatwork #studioscenes #abstractpainting

Wherever You Want To Grow #1, 40”x40” now avai

Wherever You Want To Grow #1, 40”x40” now available in the Motherhood collection. 💚

#abstractart #artistatwork #studioscenes #doitfortheprocess #piercing

Cutting a painting you’ve spent days working on

Cutting a painting you’ve spent days working on is scary - it can’t be repaired easily and you risk having to throw the whole painting out.

But call me Claire’s because I’ve been piercing paintings left and right 💅🏻💁🏼‍♀️

More pierced paintings on the golden chains of motherhood coming soon. #studioscenes #artistatwork #motherhood

To the women who showed up. My audience is mostly

To the women who showed up. My audience is mostly women. Women between the ages of 25 and 65. Women who are mothers, grandmothers, writers, artists, bakers, women who are showing up and creating beauty in their own corners of the world.

I want to thank a few women who showed up for me again and again over the past year. There have been several women who are a bit older than me, a couple of them are my friend’s mothers, a couple are artists who are much further along in their careers. Elissa, Alice, Lundi, Yetta, Liv, and Carol just to name a few. These women showed up for me when I wasn’t showing up.

When I got pregnant I was debilitated by it. I found out I was pregnant at two and a half weeks. I knew pregnancy would be hard, but even in my wildest dreams I could not imagine the depths of how horrible I would feel every second of the day and night. In comparison to labor – pregnancy was torture. I would go through labor and give birth 100 times if I could avoid the nine months of pregnancy. When I got pregnant I started to retreat. I wasn’t showing up online in this space of wonderful people I’ve collected over the years. It was simply too overwhelming.

Even when I wasn’t posting, when I stopped making art and content and stopped investing in this community – there were a few women who noticed and reached out regularly. Every day or every week I’d get funny, sweet, beautiful, encouraging messages, voice notes, reels and more. Sometimes we talked but mostly their messages made me feel less alone, they made me feel seen even when I was isolating myself. I don’t know if they could sense my pain and took compassion on me, or if their own beautiful lives couldn’t help but bubbling over and spilling into mine, but I hope they know how much their message meant to me. I don’t think it can be understated how kind, generous, insightful, sweet and good these women are. I’m thankful to know them and strive to be like them. #women #artistatwork #womenwhowork #mother #doitfortheprocess