Renée Bouchard in her studio with her son, 2014

Born in 1976 to French Canadian parents, artist Renée Bouchard has been awarded grants from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Vermont Arts Council. She has exhibited her work at numerous colleges and universities, museums, and galleries throughout New England and New York City.

Renée has been an artist in residence at the Cooper Union, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Kate Millett Art Colony for Women. Bouchard received her MFA in visual art from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2021 after graduating from the Maine College of Art in 1999.

In this interview, Renée discusses the unique creative collaborative relationship she has cultivated with her son from the time he was very young, the works they have made together, the ways their connection has evolved, and how the roles of motherhood are undervalued and discriminated against both in the art world and within American society.

Interview by Interlocutor Magazine

You’ve written, “Part of me can understand why many artists choose not to have children. My time and space is shared with another human whose behavioral development I am responsible for facilitating.”

Since artmaking can be such a focused, solitary pursuit, did you make a conscious choice when you had your son to include him in your creative process, rather than risk feeling as if your time was divided between caregiving and creating, and subsequently feeling any resentment because of that?

I’ve always wanted to be a mother. In today’s context, when women are losing the right to choose, I will be very clear that it was my decision to have a child, knowing as an artist that my child’s lifestyle would be much different than his peers. I’ve always been interested in changing the stereotypical notion of the genius artist working alone in the studio. Before becoming a mother, I acquired skills at finding ways to integrate my art with daily living. So when I found out I was pregnant, I was terrified but knew I could do it.

Looking back at the collaborative paintings I made as a stay-at-home mom for the first three years, I do see resentment in the work. The resentment lies in the continued lack of acknowledgment for the role mothers play in human evolution, the unearned income in caregiving, capitalism’s abolishment of rest, and the art historical narrative seen through a male lens.

For example, there are just a handful of artist residencies recently emerging designed for artist parents. Not too long ago, if a gallery knew the artist was a mother, they wouldn't give that artist a show. Alice Neel wasn’t recognized until she was in her seventies. Work by women in museums in the United States is at about 13%.

Becoming a mother altered me, so the collaborative work I did with my young child seems fragmented. I adjusted to 10-20 minute spurts of working time, working on a series of twelve large panels leaning on the walls from the floor so they were always accessible to both of us. I’d lay out colors I wanted, ask him to work on parts that I wasn’t working on. Things were always in process. He would respond to marks I was making. We communicated visually before he had words. This shared experience took place during the very early stages of his brain development. In a way, I was doing research while being resourceful with my limitations. The work preserves this time in a journalistic manner.

*Rubber Duck (Collaboration with my Three Year Old)* 2015, Acrylic and wax crayon on panel, 24 x 30 inches

In what ways do you think that allowing artistic development to thrive in children is essential? Even for parents who are not artists, what might they do for their children to help facilitate an atmosphere of discovery and creation?

What a lot of people don’t realize is that 90% of information received is visual. For parents who aren't artists, and want a home that thrives creatively, I suggest hanging pictures, particularly portraits, upside down periodically. Take time to discuss only what you see. I wish for all people to continue to evolve. For me, growth takes creativity and risk.

For children, they grow while they are sleeping. Try hanging images on the ceiling above their beds, this could be a way to prompt a dream about a fairy tale. Ask them what they remember about their dreams and ask them to draw a picture of it. When I was an elementary school art teacher, I told my students that the best thing about art is that there isn’t a right or wrong answer.

Photo taken by Renée’s son after he traced the outline of her body on a painting she was working on

*Resting (Collaboration with my Seven Year Old)* 2020, Watercolor, acrylic, wax crayon, and natural materials on paper, 50 x 50 inches

What have been some of the most surprising moments of creative collaboration you've had with your son? Could you talk about a couple of works in which his contributions added elements that took the look and even theme of the work in a very different direction than you'd anticipated?

The first thing that comes to mind is when he was obsessed with making slingshots. He’d use rubber bands and Y-shaped sticks, I would drill holes in the sticks for the rubber bands, and one day when I was working in the studio, he came in with a newly fashioned slingshot, pom-poms and the brilliant idea of dipping the pom-pom in paint. He then proceeded to aim this concoction at one of the paintings I was working on. The result was a perfect circle with imperfect splatterings around it.

For him, it was a new invention, a widening of our mark-making system reminiscent of the time when I would hold a stencil of a circle on the panel while he scribbled inside the circle. The splatter circle left evidence of his aim, the force and speed he used. For me, it interrupted my own gaze.

In your series of painted portraits, Anonymous Citizens, you explore “the possibility of shared identities.” How do you think this thematic exploration ties in with any sort of shared identity you have with your son?

A sort of intimacy fostered in relationships is what I am trying to achieve in my Anonymous Citizen portraits. They are portraits of someone who is becoming, present, and moving forward. It’s the ego that separates us, isn’t it? I am interested in common experiences and the process of growth. Maybe they also represent the voices in my head that say do this or don’t do that, probably what happens to my son when he hears his mama calling for him. I guess the work speaks for itself, or at least I hope it does.

In late 2020, you invited mothers in your community to “participate in a ceremonial project which realized and honored rest.” What was important to you about creating a project that honors rest, especially for women whose caregiving work is still not often recognized for its essential societal and economic values?

The ceremonial project on rest was intended to give the mothers in my community space to grieve, be angry, and heal away from their domestic duties. As a single mother, these sorts of feelings were especially heightened.

The “Inverted Basket” sculptural installation in my backyard happened with my son while I was in graduate school and homeschooling him during the pandemic. He sawed sticks gathered from the woods and wove them together with bulrush and strips of canvas. They looked like upside-down baskets. Now my neighbors have turned much of that area into a garden, something that I don’t have time to tend to but enjoy. So my idea of Mother’s Day is taking a break from caregiving and caring for myself instead.

Your son is now ten - do you have any sense of how your creative/collaborative relationship with him may change in the near future as he enters adolescence, in terms of him doing the typical rebellious posturing and acting out of teenagers? Is there any apprehension about losing this creative bond with him, or are you trying to remain accepting and open to how things evolve between you as he grows older?

While he hasn’t been working in my studio with me for a few years, it’s still a pure joy to watch him try to express himself in other ways. He is super goofy and imaginative. He makes me laugh when it feels like I am navigating the impossible.

I think the ambivalence towards motherhood for artists is due to the cultural pressure placed upon them. He is struggling into tween years knowing he is in the lower income bracket, but he is finding himself. He knows that’s okay. He is watching me continue to work as an artist despite the hundreds of rejection letters I’ve received, watching me resist, knowing most people in our culture don’t want what I am doing, but I am doing it anyway. Our conversations remain deep, and always based in curiosity.

Read Renée’s essay Artist/Mother/Quarantine in Isele Magazine

View more of Renée’s work on her site and Instagram.