I painted this piece in the raw weeks after giving birth to my first child, while navigating the ache and urgency of early breastfeeding. Colostrum—the golden yellow, fat-rich milk produced in the first days after birth, often called “liquid gold”—became both subject and symbol: nourishment, currency, demand. I was reckoning with my new identity as a milk-maker, a body suddenly measured by output, timing, and need.
At the same time, I found myself drawn to the figure of the monstrous feminine, a mother who is feral, protective, and impossibly strong. A creature who holds both tenderness and threat. In Colostra, that force erupts: the breast becomes altar, the mouth becomes portal, the body becomes a site of both production and power. The work meditates on the messy overlap between care and consumption, labor and love, human and animal, mother and monster.