Scottish artist Caroline Walker has opened a deeply personal exhibition titled "Mothering" at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, showcasing five years of oil paintings and ink drawings that explore the often-overlooked labor of caregiving. The exhibition, running until April 26, 2026, elevates the everyday rituals of motherhood and the countless forms that care can take, transforming intimate moments into monumental artistic statements.

Walker has long been fascinated by what society often dismisses as "women's work." Since 2016, she has focused her artistic lens on London's service industries, capturing scenes from nail salons with their rows of polish glinting like a painter's palette, tailors' workshops, hotel corridors, and hospital laboratories. Through these quiet observations, Walker has documented the largely invisible economic and emotional structures that sustain urban life and the subtle ways daily routines are undervalued both socially and economically.

The "Mothering" exhibition brings these concerns into sharper focus, featuring subjects undertaking frequently overlooked jobs in hospitals, nurseries, holiday parks, and domestic spaces. Walker explains the significance of her chosen title, noting that "mothering" represents an action and a way of caring, rather than an identity prescribed to the person providing care. The title was actually inspired by a staff member at her daughter's nursery, who mentioned that "mothering the children" was central to their training.

Walker's artistic approach transformed dramatically with the arrival of her first child in 2019. Her previously observational method became deeply intimate and autobiographical as she began incorporating her own family into her work. "I was working on the paintings of my mom when I became pregnant with my daughter," Walker shares. "Contemplating becoming a mother myself gave these paintings a new meaning, considering them in the context of generations of women performing the act of care in homemaking."

Throughout the exhibition, Walker's own mother appears alongside her two children, Daphne and Laurie, who age before viewers' eyes as they move between frames. In "Daphne" (2021), the artist depicts her daughter as a toddler through the window of their London home, propped against a coffee table and bathed in warm light. A more recent work, "Granny's Hair Salon" (2025), shows five-year-old Daphne with her grandmother, who smiles while gently drying the child's hair as she squirms.

One of the most striking pieces is a rare self-portrait showing Walker cradling her six-week-old son, her reflected gaze heavy with exhaustion yet softened by tenderness as she meets the viewer's eyes while laying him down to sleep. Walker acknowledges how motherhood has fundamentally changed her artistic practice: "The greatest lesson motherhood has taught me as an artist is to use my time well! It wasn't intentional, but I think naturally the work has become more personal, not only because my subject matter has been running parallel with my own family life, but also because it practically makes sense."

The synchronicity between Walker's personal experience and artistic subject matter is most evident in her "Birth Reflections" series, created from the very hospital where her daughter was born. During her prenatal appointments, Walker moved through the maternity wards and recognized a whole new world of women's work opening up – a continuum linking the hospital's labor rooms to scenes of caregiving closer to home, including her sister-in-law with her newborn and memories of her mother in her childhood home.

With support from the hospital curator and head midwife, and guided by a midwife she had known through her own pregnancy, Walker visited the ward with catalogs and consent forms, gradually earning the trust of laboring women and new mothers. "I felt very privileged to get an insight into these incredible, private moments in the way that I did," she reflects, "and a responsibility to do them justice in the paintings."

The exhibition also features two new series that expand Walker's definition of motherhood: one depicting daily life at Little Bugs nursery, and another focusing on the distinctive labor ecology of a holiday park and its parallels to caregiving work. While the original scenes Walker photographed were likely anything but serene – filled with the rhythmic sounds of hospital wards, crying babies, and playing children – her paintings hold an undeniable stillness, as if life were briefly suspended in moments pregnant with quiet acknowledgment.

Many of Walker's works measure over a meter in height, giving the intimate interiors of everyday life an prominence historically reserved for grand biblical, mythological, or historical narratives. Breast pumps, bottles, books, and toys scatter across the canvases, serving as totemic remnants of their subjects' efforts. Walker sees an inherent political dimension in choosing to paint scenes of everyday life at this monumental scale.

Despite their unflinching honesty, Walker's paintings avoid being brutal or grandiose, maintaining nuance and affection throughout. Her vision of mothering is vital and complex, expanding focus from the purely maternal to encompass the lived, multifaceted realities of caregiving. The exhibition presents a comprehensive view of care work that spans generations and various forms of nurturing labor, challenging viewers to reconsider the value and visibility of this essential human work.