Raised by a Maker

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Three sets of Vermont-based mothers and daughters creatively support one another in the arts—and in life.

Katharine Montstream and Charlotte Dworshak are mother-and-daughter painters who share studio space, time and experience, along with a large dose of mutual respect. Justine Jackson and Sophie Pickens are lifelong friends who joined forces to start an art gallery. They represent the work of their mothers, Anne Cady and Pamela Smith, respectively, as well as the work of other artists who share their sensibilities.

The mothers raised their daughters alongside their own growing artistic practices—and their offspring have bloomed in the nurturing creative soil.

Northern Daughters

Jackson and Pickens, Vermont natives, moved to the Big Apple in 2013 and 2009, respectively, not to study art, but to explore opportunities beyond the forested mountains of their home state. They found jobs. They hung out with a creative crowd. Jackson had experience selling artwork; Pickens worked for a jewelry designer.

One fall afternoon in 2015, while sitting in a Brooklyn coffee shop, they hatched a plan to merge their talents, move back to Vermont and open an art gallery. They shook hands to seal the deal, and that same afternoon came up with their gallery name—Northern Daughters, abbreviated as NoDa.

Jackson says of the business partnership, “We realized that we’re better together. The gallery is a perfect symbiosis of our skill sets.” Pickens echoes those sentiments. “It seemed preordained,” she says. “Our work, which is built on mutual trust, keeps us grounded.”

Rooted in the Arts

Pickens and Jackson were raised by Smith and Cady, strong mothers who are also exhibiting artists. The matriarchs have clearly engrained their entrepreneurial spirit in their daughters’ psyches and professional pursuits.

Smith attended Vermont’s Goddard College where she studied weaving and textiles. She and her partner went on to run a retail store, and the family often traveled to locales such as Nepal to buy objects, mostly folk art, for the shop. Smith fell in love with Nepal, and the family lived there for three years. By then Smith had been painting every day; upon moving back to Vermont, she continued to pursue her passion. Smith’s signature dreamlike imagery—primarily portraiture of women and their extended families, including animals—stylistically reflects the folk art she embraced while living abroad.

Cady supported her family, including four children, by teaching after-school art class and later as a professional artist selling her boldly colored paintings of Vermont landscapes. In what was quite the immersive experience, Jackson’s crib was situated in her mother’s classroom, which doubled as Cady’s studio.

For NoDa’s five-year anniversary in 2021, Jackson and Pickens staged an exhibition of their mothers’ works featuring bold colors and organic forms. “We were honored to be entrusted with their work,” Pickens says, “and to honor them.” Jackson adds, “The show featured artwork created by our mothers—women who have shown us the beauty of finding your way and holding your ground with both tenderness and ferocity.” Jackson and Pickens, who both recently became mothers themselves, are sure to carry on the creative legacies.

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Like Mother, Like Daughter

Montstream has been selling her art for as long as she can remember, most recently at her eponymous gallery facing City Hall Park, in downtown Burlington, Vt. She studied sociology at the University of Colorado, but went on to sell a line of watercolor greeting cards in 1988. A year later, she had a successful restaurant exhibition featuring her favorite subjects—landscapes of the lake, mountains, swimming holes and snowy woods in and around her Burlington hometown. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Largely self-taught, Montstream sought out creative mentors and studied with Wolf Kahn, the noted New England colorist and landscape painter. She credits Lawrence Goldsmith, the well-known Monhegan Island art colony watercolorist, for opening her eyes to abstraction. “He taught me to be expressive,” she says.

Following in Montstream’s footsteps, Dworshak has discovered her own affinity for art-making. “I didn’t make art growing up, but Mom made me and my siblings notice things in a different way,” she says. “She’d ask questions like, ‘What color is the lake today?’ I learned art by osmosis.”

Mother and daughter initially shared a small studio space, but Dworshak now works in her own small yet efficiently organized workspace in the same building as her mother’s studio. Both artists are drawn to the landscape, Montstream interpreting the subject naturalistically in oil and watercolor while Dworshak prefers a less representational approach painted quickly with acrylics.

The duo held their first show together in 2020, which proved successful. “My initial concern was that Char wasn’t quite ready,” Montstream says, “but when she sold 27 of her 29 paintings, that worry quickly dissipated!”

Dworshak’s work recently caught the attention of Pickens and Jackson, and included her work in a recent exhibit, further cultivating the ground of creative support among mothers and daughters.

Just one of the helpful articles you’ll find in the May/June 2023 issue of Artists Magazine, which you can find here.

Visit the websites of Anne Cady; Charlotte Dworshak; Katherine Montstream; Northern Daughters; and Pamela Smith.

Cynthia Close earned an MFA from Boston University and worked in various art-related roles before becoming a writer and editor.