Motherhood And Lipton Analysis

Motherhood is a gift, and with motherhood there is love. Two artists who have worked with compassion to represent the love and hard work found in motherhood are Laurie Lipton, who created the drawing Death and the Madien (2005) and artist Wangechi Mutu, who created the drawing Sprout (2010). The overall theme of the two drawings is love and motherhood; however, each artwork includes their own individual theme by using different colors, mediums, and symbols. Mutu and Lipton both explore a sense of human experience represented through gender, race, and strength found in the longevity and compassion that comes with childbearing, but Lipton uses death to represent motherhood and Mutu uses birth to represent the blessing of motherhood.

Lipton’s

Lipton explains the color of her work, “I work exclusively in black and white because it is the color of memory, old movies, and ancient family photographs. It's moonlit and haunted. It echoes.” Lipton traveled and studied abroad for 36 years, and “when traveling around Europe as a student, she began developing her very own peculiar drawing technique building up tone.” To set the dreary tone of her drawings, Lipton uses cross-hatching lines which characterize the deficiency in color of her work. The root behind Lipton’s drawings exist because of the death of her mother who passed away battling cancer. In an interview, Lipton explains that “death is an ending. It makes life and people precious.” Lipton uses life experiences to reflect her dark humor and addresses that skulls tend to look like they’re laughing at us, showing a sense of acceptance and fearlessness in death. The young girl embraces the skeleton, showing the audience that death is not to be feared. The drawings done by Lipton express the characteristics of motherhood by portraying life experiences that resemble the darkness of death, but also the happiness in afterlife and unconditional love found in

Lipton’s drawing is about death, as she lost her mother at a young age. Death and the Madien resembles the feelings associated with losing a parent; however, brings out the faith in unconditional love found in afterlife. Lipton uses cross-hating, intensely black and white lines and coloring to resemble dark humor associated with death. Mutu’s drawing is about childbearing and strength that comes with reproduction. Sprout is structured on the living experiences in Mutu’s lifetime by characterizing gender and sexuality through monstrous figures. Mutu uses various mediums such as magazines, pornography, collages, ink, and patterned sheets and paper to bring out the vivid imagery of women and childbearing. In Sprout, the mother is implanted in the ground. The background scheme uses black and gray colors, while the woman’s body and soil has brighter colors. By using these contrasting colors, the audience is forced to recognize the process a woman goes through to reproduce. The background is a symbol of the difficulties and pain associated with child birth. The vivid colors found in the woman and soil are a symbol of the strength and happiness of motherhood. Both drawings have dark colors; however, Sprout has brighter colors to resembles the happiness that comes with