Erin McGrath
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Erin McGrath is a Glasgow born artist who works with illustration, comics and animation. This new comic, commissioned by the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, explores her experience of new motherhood, post-natal depression and care giving, using notes and sketches she made in the year after giving birth.
The comic has been developed from notes and sketches I kept during my first two years of motherhood. I wanted to capture how the sleeplessness, feelings of isolation and shifting sense of identity really shook my connection to the world.
Erin McGrath
Revisiting the notes and shaping them into pages that felt true gave me an invaluable opportunity to take hold of a narrative that had been forged in an extremely difficult time.
I hope the comic reaches new parents and caregivers and can give them a moment of feeling less alone in their experience.
Artist Commissions 2025
Comfort & Disturb
Our theme Comfort & Disturb, references the famous Cesar A Cruz quote about art as activism, the idea that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. It is a simple expression of the power of art both to challenge and to console, often having a transformative effect on people and societies.
We commissioned five artists – Erin McGrath, HUSS, Jennifer Honnan, Robyn Woolston and Rylan Gleave – to create new work exploring this theme at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2025.
