“I feel very grateful for my experience with infertility and with fertility," LDS artist Caitlin Connolly says. "My chapter of infertility was both difficult and very refining, and it prepared me for motherhood in a way that was very important and necessary for me.”
Watching Caitlin Connolly prepare to paint is not entirely different than watching a surgeon prepare for surgery. She inserts her hands into gloves, turns on music and surveys the person portrayed on the canvas as she tries to determine their need. She likes to think of the characters she paints as “little souls,” and she is the one who brings them to life.
Connolly is now the mother of 6-month-old twins. But there was a time, amidst years of infertility, when the Utah artist worried that she was not enough as a woman, “not a mother, not a nurturer, not a good woman — just not enough.”
But then she began to visualize the faces she had painted in her mind.
In that moment, Connolly had a realization.
Lead image from the Deseret News
Caitlin Connolly is an artist living in Provo, Utah. Her artwork often explores the female experience as she seeks to understand herself and all women more fully. Her artwork is a part of private and public collections and can be viewed comprehensively at caitlinconnolly.com.
