Vol 08 : Sundays are for Mothers
With poet, author, artist, visionary Tess Guinery,
Hello friends, I’d love to welcome you to
Volume 08
of the
Sundays are for Mothers written interview series.
Happy Sunday friends!
If you’re new here, scroll down a little to see what it’s all about.
I am 10/10 excited for this release - because Tess is someone who I’ve followed and been incredibly inspired by in the online space for… years… and years… like possible even close to 10 years!
I’ve admired the way she perceives the world, the visionary within. I love how she witnesses her children through the lens of poetry, and LIVES and breathes as an artist - and has allowed it to create resources in her life too.
I’ve more recently been more connected to Tess, and something that stands out to me is that she takes her art seriously. That includes serious play, serious pondering, serious curiosity, but it all hold weight for her.
Please pour a cup of tea, coffee, wine, whatever and let yourself indulge in this interview!
Ps. I currently have enrolments open for Art of Alchemy which is my signature 8 week group journey through intuitive business for creative mothers. You’re invited, so please come and take a look to see what it’s all about… and if it’s the right season for you to join this mini revolution of mother makers.
Enrolments close March 14.
As a mother, and as a woman devoted to not only my creative process, but also exploring different avenues for my creativity, intuition, business ideas over the years - some privately, some publicly, some for arts sake, some as income streams… I’ve learned that the road can feel lonely.
Not always lonely as in physically alone - though of course that can happen too… (sort of? With kids buzzing in and out)… But alone in the sense of feeling like it’s a mystery how any other mother does it. I’ve felt, many times, that I so badly just wanted just a peak behind the curtains of other creatives, who were somehow moving between children, a creative project/ their business/ clients, the home, to their lover, into their community…
I’d ask myself questions like “How do they balance it? Does that exist? Is it just a highlight reel and it’s actually chaos like my BTS? Do the dishes get done, or is she on the laptop next to a pile of clothes needing to be folded…. “
All the way to “I wonder how she decides to price things, Does she get Ideas seducing her in the middle of the night too? What’s her process, how does it all work?”
When I published An Open Letter To Mother Creatives
It became clear that what I had known to be true, and assumed true for others…. was in fact very relatable and we are all dancing and weaving in our own ways through the journey of our motherhood and nourishing the heart with whatever our creativity is channeled into.
For those new here, Sundays are for Mothers is a bi-weekly interview series I’m publishing here on Substack exclusive to my paying community of mother makers.
The series is designed to demystify the mystery of the Mother Maker. To have a peak behind the curtains and feel both the magic and the monotonous moments of this journey as creatives and entrepreneurs. To be able to explore things like the realities of home life, relationship, raising creative children, making space for ourselves, the struggles, insecurities and celebrations that come with this walk. Intrinsically, this series is FOR YOU, the Mother Maker, to have you feel more connected to others, to dissolve guilt or shame, to spark inspiration, to normalise so much of this world as a creative, and make space for more ease within our own experiences.
I urge you to connect with the women interviewed, please come and enjoy the conversation in the comments, don’t be a stranger. Let’s create a little hub (or big hub) of energy and understanding that I believe, we all crave.
So much love, thank you for being here
Love Kat
P.S This will likely appear too long for some browsers, If so - head to the app or website to read in full.
SUNDAYS ARE FOR MOTHERS VOL 08
Name: Tess Guinery
Hey! I would love to start by sharing a bit about yourself, your family, your story and what you do.
Hello, I’m Tess, I am not a simple thing, but I am mostly simple when it comes to things.. I am artfully improvised, which is a poetic way of saying that I am mostly making things up as I go.
Strangely, I am also methodical, a pure oddity, a contradiction.
Woman, Lover, Mother, Artist.
I have found home amongst many places in the world but my current home is found with my lover and three daughters in the sweet and daggy little creative town of Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia. We have found a sincere sense of place here on the floors of mountains, ones that silhouette and make the shape of a sleeping giant laying gently on his back. His eyes are to the sky, almost as though he is teaching us how to be here.
12 years ago when Caleb (my husband) and I were only 2 years newly wed, we had this beautiful defining moment casually sitting on our living room floor one night. We literally typed our ideas into google and decided we would together pursue our wildest longings. With small pockets and big dreams, our two creative paths awoke united… 6 weeks later we packed up our sweet little life and set out to live our dreams…
My longings to make art of my everyday has been largely explored in the fascinating places we have had the opportunity to live—places we have made home for intermittent seasons due to my lover and his wild career choice to become a stuntman for film. Our dreams for the past 10 years have worked together harmoniously and I am so grateful for the rich experiences travel has gifted us, experiences that have sewn greatly into my practice as an artist.
More recently, after 10 years of living this way ( now with three daughters in tow) we found ourselves curious about the concept of grounding in one place and choosing somewhere to call home. In our attempt to try stability on for size Caleb picked up his old love for furniture making and I have been exploring new mediums too (which I’ll share more about later in the piece). It’s been one year of this new rhythm and much has grown from the soils of this decision.
Within the melting pot of my ever evolving expression as an artist and writer, I have had a strong sense of communion with dance and movement since childhood. As a former dancer and choreographer, the art I produce today reflects a beautiful intertwining where movement intersects and holds hands with many other mediums I am drawn to, behaving almost like an electric undercurrent in the way I find myself using paint, or in the way I write, or how I capture photographically. Dance has become the heartbeat that subliminally moves my art from a static dimension into something that has a sense of movement—acting as an anchor, a catalyst and a faithful point of reference for my expression as an artist.
Growing up with dance front and center of everything I put my hands to up until the age of 25, I intuitively changed creative direction upon falling in love spending my newly wed status and post-dance career studying design at The Karl Von Busse institute of Design. It was here that I learnt to execute my appreciation for beauty found in commonplaces with tools that allowed me to translate my findings through new forms of art and various visual mediums. This was an expansive time for me, giving me new ways to express my heart's longings outside and beyond my familiar lean in the expression dance. This was where I learnt that no medium is ever to be considered out of bounds.
My love for design opened up new worlds for me, a fast growing passion that became a great traveling companion allowing me to easily pack up my work and take it with me whenever we were flown overseas for a film Caleb was working on. Design jobs began to soar towards me in flying colors and I was given many opportunities to create some really beautiful work for some dream clients. During my 6 year cycle of pursuing design, I fell pregnant with our daughter who quickly became the world's best travel companion—nomadic by nature or nurture or both, she has seen more places than she can yet comprehend on a map. My freelance career as a designer gave me the right amount of flexibility to work from home, travel and be with my daughter full time. After 6 years in the design industry I decided to take a sabbatical, a bold and audacious pause to allow my inner artist some spaciousness outside the strict bounds of a design brief. This pause begot some of my greatest creations yet— my twin daughters and the improvised forming of my first book.
A book that was the catalyst to two more books, ones that formed over a series of 3 years, each unfolding as they needed in opposing seasons. One written from a place of play, another from a place of pain and my most recent and fondest book ‘The Stars Nodded’, a self-published poetry book dedicated to my three daughters.
Discovered and published by Andrews Mcmeel Publishing after 2 years in circulation as self titled pieces (due to a very generous kickstarter), the books soared brightly and rapidly all over the world (in a way that I was never prepared for) landing in hundreds of different geographical locations. Poems from the books have been printed on bed sheets and t-shirts and mugs and walls and tattooed on bodies and quoted in other languages, transcribed and published into Dutch versions—and I am so grateful for all of it.
To my own dismay, I often find pleasure in protesting against my own defaults. I like to make a habit of sitting with my own sense of comfortability and asking myself if I need a little bit of a sift or stir. And with a curiosity within me that wouldn’t budge or negotiate—there was an undeniable feeling that the art I had created from these 3 books and their 5 years of circulation needed to take a bow, have a curtain call and be honored with a timestamp.
One can not continue to ride on the art of yesterday.
And upon my inner-protest, at midnight, Dec 31st, 2022, I took down all the art off my website, discontinued it (along with my income) to take posture at the table—with nothing but the three books sitting as time-stamps as an emblem to the season that had been.
It was the questions I began to ask myself that were the catalyst to this decision…
What is the art now asking of me?
Could I write for a living and stay true to the size of my nervous system?
Could I start from scratch and make an income again?
And the most vulnerable question of all…
Could I become a full time paid writer?
Which brings me to my now, mid-process, a quarter way there…on Substack / ‘Catching Shower Flowers’
Tenacious about growth, I am committed to being as water as I adhere to the ever-changing cyclical phases that come with choosing to embrace the creative process as a way of life. Creativity has always felt instinctive and in that I’ve adhered to the concept that creativity as a practice, is innately part of life rather than an extension of it. The pursuit of seeing beauty and being awake to it is the undercurrent and leading of all my work. I seek it through conversation and electric communion in my prayer life, it’s here, my eyes become awake to beauty and from this place, I create.
What’s your favourite beverage to drink in the morning (and why)
Coffee!
My way about it is very quintessential 1990-esque meets Gilmore girls with a nod to Seinfeld. I have a bright mission-yellow Mocca-master and I’m all about filter coffee with a dash of full cream milk. I love the gentle night time habit of setting it all up for the morning where I can rise easily with a quick flick of a switch and let the kitchen slowly fill with my favorite aroma. This is my idea of a good beginning. There’s a gentle art found in this— and also, there’s something soothing in the nostalgia of imagining I’m in a 90’s sitcom every morning.
Hello friends, as always I pop the first two questions up for free, and the rest of the interview has its home for my paying readers here. This is volume 08, meaning there are 8, incredibly inspiring interviews to come and read. You’re invited!
It’s just about a coffee for a month, which opens my entire archive of over 90 articles to come and cosy in each evening with a tea.
For those paying, you can scroll down and continue reading.
If you’re new here - you can head to Substack on your desktop/ or phone safari/ or the email itself - to upgrade (Just not through the app).
Lots of love!
Kat