Image of the Week: Gentle Birth
© Durga Yael Bernhard
This illustration was created for a book titled Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, written by Sarah Buckley, MD – an Australian doctor, mother, and internationally known authority on natural birthing and parenting choices. Sarah had authored several articles for Mothering Magazine, for whom I had also worked as an illustrator. Seeing my artwork there, she reached across the globe to commission me to create an image for her book cover.
I was honored and pleased to accept the assignment. After hearing Sarah talk about her book, an image quickly began to take shape: a universal mother in harmony with the moon and stars, sensual as a rose, at ease with herself. The mother sets the stage for her newborn, beginning with how she pushes him out into the world, how she receives her, and how she holds him through the early weeks of life, night after night. I had experienced this unique nighttime intimacy with my own three infants, and felt the enormity of what it means to be a mother, to bring forth life, to sustain and nurture a dependent being, to shape their earliest impressions of the world.
I wanted the mother in my illustration to have mass – like the figures in a Diego Rivera painting, solid as the earth. She fills the sky, and also carries it within her breast. Her hair is like a river. Her child is active, alert, and relaxed – for only when securely held and loved can babies relax into a state of active discovery. To a newborn, mother is a whole world that embraces and feeds him. A well-tended, natural birth makes it a gentle world for both mother and child.
The author wanted cool, feminine colors on the cover, and minimal detail to suggest universal figures. Sarah also wanted to strike a balance between professional and earthy, so that her book would appeal to both mainstream doctors and lay midwives. The world needs more doctors like this, who speak the language of modern medicine yet can understand a birthing mother's body – and a baby's most primal needs.
Eventually Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering was republished by PenguinRandom House, whose editors insisted on changing the cover image to a photograph. It's a nice enough photo – but the book looks like it belongs in a OB-GYN's waiting room, not on a midwife's couch. Ah well, selling books isn't easy these days. I enjoyed the experience nonetheless.
A good week to all!
D Yael Bernhard
children's books • fine art • illustration
D Yael Bernhard