Express Yourself

Talking about motherhood and creativity with the artist, Lakwena Maciver.

Lakwena McIver’s work embodies a joyful positivity that is layered with meaning and metaphor. Across a range of mediums, Lakwena blends meticulous geometric lines with mouth-watering colours and bold typographic meditations on love, freedom and liberation that leave you instantly buoyed. Whether emblazoned on a tower block in Munich, across the rooftop of Temple station or on the back of someone wearing one of her Fiorucci collab t-shirts, Lakwena’s work encourages us all to dream bigger for ourselves and our communities. She champions Black joy and family love. She creates paradise on earth and gives a sense of hope to everyone who interacts with her work; if something so big and beautiful can exist in the world then maybe, just maybe, everything is not completely doomed

Living in London with her two young sons and husband, Lakwena has always juggled motherhood with her ascending career. We spoke to her to find out how the two parts of her life cross over, how motherhood has influenced her creativity and how she deals with the inevitable constraints family life puts on her time.  

Did you grow up in a creative household?

We were always singing at home with my mum and my dad and we sang at church. My dad is from Northern Uganda and he was in the village choir so I learned to harmonise from him. Also, my Grandmother was an opera singer and my sister is now a professional singer so it’s in our family’s heritage.

My mum was quite relaxed about what we wanted to do as a career, my Dad wanted me to be an architect or something more academic. It was complicated with my Dad, but he supported me with my art later on in life. We did an art market in Greenwich when he lived there and he helped me on the stall, bringing a packed lunch and he would display my paintings in his house.  

Before you had children, did you have a specific practice or process when it came to how you worked and has that changed since you've had children?

Not so much a set process but I feel like on a practical level I’m making more work now. I'm doing more drawings for murals or installations that are then painted by someone else but that’s because of how my work has progressed and partly because it’s more convenient with the kids.

The year after my first son was born I travelled so much as I was quite anxious about getting back to work. I just wanted to be back out there. I was doing a lot of large installations, it's so raw when you're actually painting out in the streets. It's difficult and all-consuming but in a really nice way. Having that space for me was good; you don’t have to be back at a certain time, there are no distractions. It was like being carefree again.

Thinking about time constraints—if you've got a certain amount of time in the studio, but the work isn’t flowing or the creative ideas don't come, how do you deal with that?

To be honest, I can't remember the last time I felt like that because I just don't have the time for it. I just have to get things done in the time that I have.

I've got a really exciting project coming at the end of this year and I'm hoping that I will have the time to take it slowly and really delve into some research but I haven't had the space to do that kind of thinking for a while.

Do you feel that in one respect that time pressure is quite good because it forces you to push yourself? Sometimes if you have more time, you procrastinate and the real creative thinking doesn’t until the last minute anyway.  

Definitely. But it's just so exhausting, isn't it? Sometimes I look at people who don't have kids, especially artists who don't have kids, who really sit with an idea, or they have a full day a week for going to exhibitions. I’d love to be able to do that but I am very efficient in the four days that I do have to work.

The way I see it, it's such a privilege to be able to have kids and they’re such a joy that I’m not interested in complaining about it. I just accept how things are because I’ve got kids and there’s a level of some sacrifice you have to make.

I'm growing a team now that I can call on; I'm learning to do that a bit more and that's the direction I'm trying to take things so that I can make more space in my week for what we were just talking about—exhibitions, reading, thinking through ideas a lot more.

I'm always conscious of the danger of becoming too mechanical and then the work is going to suffer. So, it’s important to have the space to innovate and just be free and play.

What would play look like for you?

Anything that opens up my mind—it doesn't have to be too radical. Creating without an end goal in mind, where there's no required outcome. My dad passed away in December and I was doing these drawings late at night to kind of process that. They’re literally just drawings in a sketchbook and they might not go anywhere, but I want more time for that kind of creativity.

It feels like your work has always carried spiritual and positive meanings and the in-situ works always feel especially nurturing and uplifting. Have these messages taken on a deeper meaning since you’ve become a mother?

I'm more aware of culture, and what culture I'm sharing and passing on to my kids. My work is very much about trying to create culture or create an environment or a space and I think about that lot with each project or painting.

I did this series called Homeplace at the end of my second maternity, where I was painting my home. I hadn’t painted outside for ages, there was also the pandemic so I was working in this smaller domestic way, really celebrating that space. I was thinking of my home as a space that I had influence over and looking at what I wanted to impart to my kids through it. My oldest son was learning to read at the time so it was a really special time when he was reading the words I was painting on the walls of our home.

You mentioned earlier about feeling anxious about taking time out and things moving on without you or around you whilst you were taking time out for maternity. Where does that anxiety come from?

I don't think it was anything anyone said to me, but I thought that if I stepped back or if I disappeared for a year the world would move on without me. With my second maternity break, I didn't feel so scared because I was just like, “I can't do all of this,” and I took a year off.

It’s difficult though, for two reasons; there’s the self-expression side of it and missing that as a creative person and then there’s the fact that things are so competitive and I’m really driven and, if I’m honest, some of my self-esteem comes from my work—it’s how I connect with the world—so when that's gone as a new mother it's hard. Your body changes and you don't have time to look after yourself the way they did before. Your work is gone, you’re worried about getting it all back and you’re pulled in seven different directions.

That said, the kids are also a relief when work is getting a bit intense. Being with the kids is an escape. Just being able to sit in the park with them in the sunshine is a relief.

Kids are so free and expressive. They haven’t been conditioned into judging their own creativity as bad or good. What have you learned from your kids when it comes to your own creativity?

I love drawing with my oldest son. We’ve drawn and painted to music together since he was about 2. He is incredible, his creativity is coming from somewhere else, he has really been helping me—he’s like my secret weapon because he’s so free, he’s totally unconditioned whereas I have all this conditioning and baggage of what I think is good or bad. He literally just draws whatever he likes and I love it. When we’ve been drawing and painting together it’s like a flow state. It’s also connected to my Dad. He actually looks like my Dad and he got to know him quite well so it’s been really special to collaborate on this process.

How do you feel about your identity as a mother and an artist? Apart from this beautiful process you share with your son, do you keep the two separate areas of your life separate or do they cross over?

I think the two identities are quite separate and I’m ok with that. Almost all of the work is inspired in part by my kids—as in the Homeplace project and the Jump Paintings, but it doesn’t actually involve them in the making. Also the work I’m making right now is very specific and meticulous, and so it wouldn’t work.

One of the things I find difficult about being a mum is that sometimes you feel like every single bit of your space is taken up; your mind, your body, your time, your ideas. So having my work and that part of my identity to myself is really important and I don’t think I see that changing.

But the more recent drawings I’ve been doing with my older son have opened me up more to how it could work with them being more involved in the process, as collaborators in a way—we both sign our names to the work that we make together. It’s something I’m excited about exploring more because it’s been a really enjoyable new way of working for me.

www.lakwena.com

Read the other stories in our MOTHERHOOD edition.