ARTIST STATEMENT
My work begins with experiences that are intensely felt but difficult to name. I am interested in the emotional landscape of motherhood—the simultaneous tenderness and fear, beauty and exhaustion, intimacy and loss of control that can exist within ordinary moments.
In my current series, Mom Brain, I use abstraction to explore pregnancy, birth, early motherhood, anxiety, guilt, and the repetitive mental labor of caregiving. Fluid acrylics move unpredictably across the surface while heavier layers, marks, and textures interrupt or contain them. I am drawn to this tension between control and surrender: I can initiate a movement, but I cannot completely determine where it will go.
The paintings are not intended as literal illustrations of motherhood. Instead, they translate internal states into color, movement, density, and space. A first heartbeat, intrusive thoughts, postpartum sadness, or maternal guilt becomes something physical—something that can be seen rather than simply carried.
Through the work, I am interested in making visible the complicated interior life that can exist alongside love.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Cindy Klarwasser is a German-American artist and writer based in Los Angeles. Her abstract and mixed-media work explores motherhood, memory, anxiety, identity, and the often invisible emotional landscape of caregiving. Working primarily with acrylic, fluid media, and textured surfaces, she uses layers, movement, and color to translate experiences that can be difficult to articulate in words.
Her current body of work, Mom Brain, emerged from her experience of pregnancy and early motherhood and examines the tenderness, intensity, repetition, fear, and contradiction contained within maternal life. Klarwasser’s broader creative practice spans visual art, writing, and independent publishing through NYClementine, the creative house she founded around storytelling, childhood, motherhood, and memory.
© Cindy Klarwasser