New exhibition explores the 'psychedelic' experience of motherhood

Jen Wade has always had a “drive to document”. A former journalist and opinion editor of The Journal, she left her career to pursue art. She worked at the Douglas Hyde Gallery for a number of years before coming to Waterford where she did a short art, design and craft course in Waterford VTOS. She now works as a communications assistant at GOMA Gallery.

‘The soft animal of your body’ is her first solo show and happened in tandem with her becoming a parent.

She explained that the exhibition was a way for her to process the “seismic transformation” in her life. With many of the paintings a result of “direct snapshots” from the artist's life, looking at the work feels like reading the diary of a new mother.

The front room of GOMA gallery is full of pink-hued, dreamy portraits of early parenthood. The front room also includes some paintings Wade did before she became a mother.

In her artist walk-through, she noted that these earlier paintings are “much more resolved images rather than the later expressive works". Indeed, her earlier works have an intensity and focus that the larger paintings in the room don’t. One of the reasons for this, Wade explained, is that after having a child, she had far less time to plan her work as meticulously as she had before, instead, “it's big gestures”. This doesn’t mean her most recent work isn’t any less considered, in fact, it is the opposite.

In the larger canvas the viewer is situated as the painter herself, sometimes looking down at her child while they breastfeed or gazing upon a man sleeping, his fist curled around the bright red silk bedclothes.

Fabric is a consistent element in all her more recent paintings. In the days after having her first child, Wade became far more aware of fabric – blankets and bedclothes became far more important to her than they had been before. 

She said, “I realised how we take care of ourselves but also how vulnerable we are. We’re the only species in the animal kingdom that wears clothes.” 

Her work has a hazy, dreamlike quality to it and that is intentional. Wade said that in the early days of parenthood, “time gets warped. Some of that slippage is soft and dreamy. Some moments are darker.” 

Indeed, Wade does not shy away from the intensely “difficult physical and emotional experience” of giving birth. In the room further back in GOMA gallery, the soft pinks become blood reds.

She said, “For all the lovely parts of bringing life into the world, it’s a crucible. I didn’t want to be too twee. The darkness is part of it too.” 

Many art students of SETU attended the walkthrough and one student asked Wade the reason for her intense hues in the more intense selection of her works.

Wade answered that having a child is “an incredibly psychedelic experience. Your relationship to the world is fundamentally changed.” 

As she said this, I saw a number of women nod their heads.

Wade’s solo exhibition will run until March 28. Admission is free.