Most mornings, artist Riley Sheehey walks her three-year-old daughter, Bryn, to her nursery school around the corner from their Falls Church, Virginia, house, returns home, and steps into her small studio. She sketches, chooses colors, and paints her ideas into life, driven by a single goal: “I want to make people smile, especially kids, but also adults,” she says. “I don’t think we ever outgrow the need for that.”
Sheehey’s fanciful style takes many forms. Soft, dainty florals festoon her collections of wallpapers, ribbons, and fabrics. Her whimsical watercolors (originals and prints) invite viewers into worlds where flamingos enjoy pool floats, ostriches balance on unicycles, giraffes take tea, raccoons roast marshmallows, and tutu-wearing bears practice pliés.
Sweet scenes reminiscent of antique delft tiles celebrate the art of being a mom by highlighting the ordinary moments of the endeavor. Moms and kids dance in the kitchen with a spatula microphone during dinner prep; they play hide-and-seek while making the bed; they splash in rain puddles. Sheehey’s new book, Modern Motherhood, compiles one hundred of these works.
Vintage copies of classic books also benefit from Sheehey’s touch. After her husband gave her a 1910 copy of Little Women, she was inspired by the cover’s open space. “I filled it in, painting scenes from the story for my daughter,” she says. “I put it on Instagram, and the feedback was huge.” Plus, the project proved so fun, she thought, why not do more? Sheehey and her husband scoured antique shops and estate sales searching for the storybooks she cherished as a child. Her embellished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Charlotte’s Web, Little House on the Prairie, and more flew off the shelves of her online shop.
So do her painted playing card decks—Sheehey transforms the ace of clubs into a clover field, outfits jacks and kings with fedoras and pom-pom-topped beanies, and adds favorite Southern foods (blue crabs, strawberries, ruby ripe tomatoes) to number cards.
The playful quality of her works points to her past. The former elementary school art teacher left the classroom to paint full-time in 2017, after friends’ reactions to her artistic gifts gave her the confidence to pursue art as a career. Her own childhood loves also shine through in her work. “Children’s book illustrators I grew up with inspire me,” she says.
The boundless imaginations of real-life kiddos, including her daughter, fuel her creativity, too. “Bryn will do or say these silly things, and my interactions with her often trigger ideas,” she says, “like the idea of Modern Motherhood.” Sheehey recalls a time that she needed to take a shower but also needed to watch her daughter. “So, I had her in the bathroom, and we started playing peekaboo with the shower curtain so I could keep an eye on her.” The impromptu game sparked Sheehey’s realization that while the day-to-day isn’t always photographed or memorialized in a baby book, it still holds meaning.
While she hopes the book encourages parents to savor every fleeting second with their children, she’s not interested in offering traditional “mothering” advice. “The only wisdom I have to give is, ‘You are doing a great job!’ That’s what I needed and still need to hear.”
Knowing her art enchants yet rises above visual appeal is also music to her ears and made Modern Motherhood a passion project, she says. Before it was published, she posted a few of its paintings on Instagram, and the response was powerful. “People began reaching out and sharing their personal parenting stories with me, both happy and sad,” she says, “and I thought, ‘This is it!’ I want my art to connect, to resonate, and these little paintings hit it. That’s been so rewarding.”
