Trigger warning

A baby is born every quarter of a second

I gave birth once.

I often think about the moment just after, he was lying on a piece of cloth and the nurse was checking his responses or whatever they do, but all I remember is looking at him, not as a part of me or something I gave birth to, but as a totally absolutely new being.

I think I started drawing this moment because of a recent exhibition of writer and artist Hallgrímur Helgason. He painted his old father as he was dying. He painted his last breath, over and over again.

When someone paints last breaths, someone else has to draw first breaths. This rule is inescapable. Otherwise we’d have a problem, which we do. Hence this balancing act.

Just as old people look the same when breathing their last breath, first-breathers look more or less the same.

They have that same black eternity in their eyes.

It is hard to draw.