ABOUT 44.4
Our Goals
To empower mother/artists through community, dialogue, and bold artistic expression while challenging societal norms and promoting inclusivity and equality.
To create a world where mother/artists are valued, supported, and celebrated for their unique perspectives, contributions, and creative expressions.
History
The 44.4 Mother/Artist Collective was founded in 2019 by artists Sarah Jane Estabrooks and Elizabeth Raymer Griffin, who occupied adjacent neighborhood studios in Ottawa.
Why 44.4?
The name for our collective, 44.4, is a reference to Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/Flower No.1, which in 2014 sold at auction for $44.4 million, setting the record for the highest price paid for work by a female artist. Notably, O'Keeffe never had children, despite wanting them, as she did not believe that child-raising and art were compatible careers. 44.4 is our number. It splits, divides, shares and carries. It reminds us of the difficult decisions women have made for the sake of their careers.
About Us
The 44.4 Mother/Artist Collective is a growing group of women artists working on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. Positioned at the intersection of motherhood and art, our Collective shares knowledge, encourages creative self-actualisation, empowers professional advancement, and advocates for representation and support for mothers and caregivers in the arts. In making our Mother/Artist status visible, we aim to empower other artists to do the same.
Members are drawn from different lived experiences, types of training, and artistic expressions. As a group, we have come together around the specific challenges of combining artistic practice with the gendered, and very real, performance of motherhood. For some, these issues are visible in our work; for others, our role as mothers is only apparent outside our studios. Disclosing our status as mothers has been a difficult decision and something that many of us have compartmentalized in order to participate in the art world. We want to change this, through artmaking, conversation, and by providing the space and support for this to happen.