The first Procreate Project ‘Mother Art’ Prize is a new prize in the contemporary art world, available to win for artists who are mothers, to support and provide them with a platform to showcase and evaluate their work.

Artists participating in the Mother Art Prize competition responded to the theme ‘Left Overs’: What is left of our sanity, bodies, sexuality, time and identities when mothering? What remains unused or unconsumed? How do left overs feed creativity?

The Mother Art Prize 2017 winner is the ‘The Divide’ by Mary Martins.

The Divide is an Animated Documentary that looks at one of the many ways in which love can exist in challenging circumstances. These are a higher level of intellectual abstraction that combine non-representational images with narrative. In the wider scope, unraveling interesting ways to relate these to current non-salient social issues, political issues and our human rights. The first film is about the separation of both parents resulting in single motherhood.

As a non-conformist Animator, I am currently exploring transcultural abstract art in its various manifestations in order to achieve creative harmony. I create movement and visuals in non-literal wilderness, challenging the negative connotations that often conceals the beauty behind truth, meaning and reality. I apply the medium of Animation to capture the zeitgeist of our modern times, concurrently addressing several existentialist ideals.

The films plays around a series of paintings produced by a baby at nursery during the breakdown of the relationship between his Mother and Father. The film rejoices the child’s creativity which leads to the mother’s acceptance of a new life. This causes her to experience moments of happiness and profound beauty.

“The non-representational becomes the non-judgmental and objective projection of life. This will enable me to deconstruct stereotypes, giving rise to the empowerment of the under-represented.”

Shot on B&W 16mm Film
Colour Digital
Oil Paints on Glass
Spray Paint and Pastel
Sand on glass
Animated glass paint on 16mm film

The Award Winner received:

  • 1 Month residency at the next Mother House’s opening 2018 (this covers Childcare and Art Studio for 1 artist and 1 child) wwww.motherhousestudios.com
  • £200 cash prize
  • Up to 5 pieces of work exhibited at the Left Overs Show, within Filia Conference 2017
  • 1 year online Membership with Procreate Project
  • 1 free mentoring session with Sylvie Gormezano, Director at Picture this productions and Chair of the Association of Women Art Dealers (AWAD)
  • 1 free ticket to Oxytocin: Mothering the World 2018 (dates TBC)

Mary Martins is a London based documentary Animator and Ethnologist. Her ideas are often of a philosophical nature as it enables her to work with a great degree of autonomy. She will be progressing onto an MA at the Royal College of Art where she endeavours to produce a series of philosophical essay films ‘a treatise’ as an exploration of transcultural art in its various manifestations in order to make sense of how we inhabit the world beyond sense-perception and appearance. With a strong interest in aesthetics she hopes to link her research around phenomenology with animism, theosophy, humanism and social constructions.

In an attempt to push boundaries within her work, she juxtaposes various traditional film making techniques retaining the rich elements of our past.

University of East London
BA Animation & Moving Image

University of the Arts London, LCC
Foundation in Animation

University of Birmingham
BA Philosophy