Climbing Mother by Brian Kershisnik: Representing Mothers as Sacred Spaces

Authors

• Elijah Clark

Keywords

sacred motherhood, maternal sanctuary, spiritual growth

Abstract

Brian Kershisnik’s collection The Difficult Part is a series of artworks that includes paintings from throughout the artist’s career. A repeated theme in this collection is motherhood. One particularly striking painting, Climbing Mother, is an oil on canvas piece painted in 2013 (wall text for Climbing Mother). Brian Kershisnik is a Latter-day Saint artist known for depicting mundane things as holy and for making holy things more approachable to modern audiences. For example, Kershisnik has many paintings of the Madonna and Christ child where they are shown as real people in everyday scenarios. The normalcy of his paintings has always struck me in particular; it causes me to consider small, everyday occurrences more carefully and respect them as holy. This is why Climbing Mother resonated so strongly with me.

Recommended Citation

Clark, Elijah (2026) "Climbing Mother by Brian Kershisnik: Representing Mothers as Sacred Spaces," AWE (A Woman’s Experience): Vol. 12, Article 17.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/awe/vol12/iss1/17