As a professional artist, I recently carried out a large commission for Harvard Medical School in collaboration with my scientist husband during the coronavirus pandemic, often with our children at home in the next room.
These three large, mixed-media abstract paintings were not created in optimal circumstances or settings — but I surrendered that and let the creative process do its thing. It’s a project I wanted to return to again and again over many months. It both anchored and re-launched me as a working artist. I even got to image Sars-CoV-2 (also known known as COVID-19) while living with it!
Needless to say, it was cathartic.
I know catharsis well. I earned my master’s degree in art therapy in 2005, from the College of New Rochelle. Meanwhile, my husband, Joe, had started a postdoc in biological chemistry at Harvard Medical School. After we married in 2007, I moved from the suburbs of New York City, where I had spent much of my life, to join him in Massachusetts.
I had lived in the state’s rural Berkshires during my time as an undergraduate at Williams College, but our Brookline/Boston neighborhood is much more urban. At the same time, I also transitioned from practicing art therapy into teaching art at Mt. Alvernia High School in Newton, which was a meaningful avenue for me to explore as we hoped to start a family.
During those early years, I brought my art therapy training (socializing and reflecting on the art experience, ego-building identity work) into the classroom to complement and design curriculum.
Embracing the unknown
I consider myself adventurous in spirit. It’s the artist in me who likes to experiment and try out new possibilities. It served me well in adjusting and in shaping a new professional life for myself while supporting Joe’s career in academia.
Using the Gupte Scale, I would rank my relocation as a 12/15. I went all-in with our move, as I tend to do with most things in my life be it exercise, fundraising or artmaking. We lack close proximity to family, but we do have a fantastic network of friends who I can turn to and am grateful to know.
I’m also deeply thankful for my faith community and count on prayer and contemplation time with God, friends and family as a needed grace in living out my family and professional life. Two favorite quotes/mantras? “The soul is no traveler” (Emerson) and “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). I know amazing women from all over the world on account of forming a St. Mary’s Mothers Group in 2011, born out of my own need for connection, and continuing to this day.
While it was a harder move to New England than I thought in terms of adjusting to the culture and winter here, once I became a mother and chose to stay at home with our three kids, I began connecting to other parents at great parks and through children’s classes and activities.
Unexpected benefits
Parenting also nurtured my return to work last year, as it turns out! Sharing art processes as a volunteer at my daughter’s preschool led to a Brookline Early Education Program visual arts teaching grant for the 2021-22 school year, in addition to my commissioned work and participating in local exhibitions. I had exhibited my artwork at a NYC gallery as a young adult, but now, I’m exploring artistic opportunities and connections on my own terms. I’m reinventing.
I truly believe aspects of our identity can reemerge in welcome and unexpected ways and, like a collaged self-portrait, can form a new image of ourselves.
What have I learned from my experience as a trailing spouse? Be up for an adventure! Be responsive to the people and opportunities brought before you and consider them with an open mind and heart. Talk things over with your spouse (for sure)!
Thank you for reading my story. To learn more about me and my artwork, please visit my website and follow me on Instagram @loparoerin.
