My figurative paintings explore the sensations of the female body through themes of fertility, maternity, and the monstrous feminine. Pitting it against patriarchal views, the monstrous feminine emphasizes the female reproductive body as the core of the monstrous.The two works in this show reference my fertility and motherhood journeys and express the “monstrous feminine” not in repulsion or horror, but rather in reverence. I recognize the strength and wisdom of the everchanging female body through conception, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. The constant transitions of the uncontained mothering body are messy, monstrous and grotesque, yet awe-inspiring all the same. Using amorphous, contorted shapes for the mother’s body, I emphasize the acrobatics of motherhood and conception–we twist and turn in whatever way necessary in our choices of whether to bear life. Having grown up on a cranberry farm in South Shore Massachusetts, I sometimes use cranberries as symbols of fertility. The berries act as seeds or talismans in my path towards motherhood, equating the agricultural fertility of my upbringing with the fertility of the female body.

Read Catherine LeComte Lecce’s interview with Alexandra Carter.

• Matrescence