An art world mum’s memoir of postnatal depression and her messy life

NEW YORK – “They’re so pretty and lush,” American author Sarah Hoover said, while looking at a painting by Cecily Brown.

Featuring a swirl of pastels, the piece was characteristic of the British artist, who is known for colourful, frenetic works that appear abstract but reveal distinct and often explicit figures when observed closely.

“They’re a little pornographic and a little filthy,” Hoover added.

It was a Saturday morning in November, and she had just arrived at the Paula Cooper Gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan to see an exhibition of Brown’s paintings.

Hoover, 40, a former gallery director who left her job to pursue a writing career, refers to the artist’s works in a new memoir out in January.

The convergence of pretty and dirty is a through line in Hoover’s book, The Motherload: Episodes From The Brink Of Motherhood.

She writes about attending fabulous parties while coping with harrowing nightmares and vicious anxiety after the birth of her first child, a son, in 2017.

She also untangles some knots in her marriage to American artist Tom Sachs. The couple had their second child, a daughter, in 2024.

Hoover began writing The Motherload towards the end of a 14-year career at the Gagosian Gallery, during which she cultivated a reputation as a savvy art-world fixture with a bubbly demeanour, a passion for contemporary painters and a wardrobe of flouncy Chanel minidresses.

In the book, she presents a far less polished version of herself. She had postnatal depression, which manifested in a potent mix of self-loathing, apathy for her son and rage towards her husband.

She writes about losing faith in doctors after her obstetrician performed an extra vaginal suture known as a “husband stitch” without her consent after the birth of her son.

For her daughter’s birth, Hoover saw a different obstetrician and demanded that she be consulted about every procedure, “even if it’s in the name of medicine”.

“I don’t want to speak for other women,” she said as she walked out of Brown’s art exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery. “But I’ve learnt in my own life of being a woman that saying your most shameful thing out loud most often has resulted in other people being like, ‘Oh my God, me too. I’m so glad someone said it.’”

Hours earlier, she was at home with Sachs, 58, and snuggling her daughter, who was bundled up in a lilac cashmere cardigan.

Their apartment, comprising the top two floors of a small building in NoLiTa, has a breakfast nook, a balcony overlooking an interior courtyard and curated touches that impart a sense of nonchalant luxury.

There is a handwritten sign noting the home’s “no shoes” policy and a silver mint julep cup stuffed with toothbrushes on a bathroom counter. The living room is furnished with moss-green velvet curtains and a painting of passenger pigeons that the artist Walton Ford made for Hoover. On a side table were more paintings that the couple’s son, now seven, made at camp.

Over breakfast – waffles, bacon and toast prepared by Hoover and pour-over coffee made by Sachs – the two exchanged what at times sounded like practised banter.

Sachs compared his life before Hoover with that of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, specifically to Jobs’ living without a sofa for several years because he could not find one to his liking.

“I was always on that path to be the man who lived without curtains or a sofa,” he said. “One of the many great things that Sarah brought to my life is civility.”

Hoover deadpanned in reply: “You’re so lucky you met me.”

As she was drafting The Motherload, she wrote articles about motherhood for publications such as New York magazine and Vogue. They involved semi-taboo parenting topics: how she does not like to play with her son, for example.

The faults and failings of Sachs that Hoover shares in The Motherload – his aloofness during her first pregnancy, his complaints about burning his tongue on french fries right after she gave birth, his flirtations with other women – portray him as prone to thoughtlessness and duplicity. But he instructed Hoover not to go easy on him, she said.

“‘You’re an artist now,’” she recalled him telling her. “‘You’re going to have to do things that are embarrassing. You’re going to have to tell your shame. Make me sound as bad as you need to.’”

After each of her pregnancies, Hoover and Sachs hired the same live-in baby nurse for a period of time. The nurse “modelled for me the way to be a mum”, Hoover said. “She modelled true kindness and goodness and openness to these tiny creatures.”

These days, Hoover takes her son to school in Brooklyn on some mornings and does bedtime three nights a week, which she is very strict about, she said. Other nights, she tries to see art, preferably dance.

Now that she has another child, she says she has been luxuriating in certain things she did not do the first time around, especially long walks with her daughter in a stroller. She writes from Sachs’ studio, which is a few blocks from their apartment.

Hoover knows that The Motherload offers less than flattering glimpses of herself. She is also aware that it may make her husband “sound bad”, she said. But she has found power in opening up about the turmoil, angst and mess swirling around in her outwardly pretty life.

“I gave up on worrying about being embarrassing,” she said. “Caring about being embarrassing didn’t get me anywhere.” NYTIMES