Gothic fairy-tale art about the strange and terrifying experience of becoming a mom

Invaders, a drawing by Allie Gattor, is a picture of a woman under siege. She's a long-limbed figure, dressed like a character from a fractured fairy tale. Turning away from the viewer — eyes bulging, teeth gnashing — she struggles to ignore the mewling scourge that's crawling at her feet.

It's an army of babies. So many babies. A relentless horde of diapered homunculi, threatening the absolute sanctity of Me Time.

You don't have to be a mom to pick up on the fear, anxiety and deranged humour that Gattor has managed to pack into one scene. "I live in a neighbourhood that is riddled with babies. Like, every other person on the street is being pushed in a stroller," Gattor explains, calling from the Montreal apartment that doubles as her studio. And when she got the idea for Invaders, Gattor was a casual, child-free observer of her local baby boom.

"I felt like they were coming at me from everywhere while I was just trying to mind my own business," she says, talking about the neighbourhood tykes. And as she fleshed out Invaders, Gattor imagined herself in the pointy-toed shoes of the drawing's main character. "Like, this is so weird! Leave me alone!" she laughs.

These days, however, Gattor has a different take on the piece. The image is still funny, still surreal. "But now when I look at it, it's more about not having a second to yourself," she says, speaking with CBC Arts. And as if on cue, the gurgling coo of a happy infant interrupts our call.

Gattor is a new mom, and as the saying goes, kids change everything. Her daughter was born in August, and the artist's experience of pregnancy and early motherhood has inspired her latest series of drawings. A collection of those works is now appearing at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau in Montreal. The exhibition, Nesting, will be there through Dec. 20, and the show tells a story about waiting, wondering and worrying, Gattor explains. It captures the anxiety of watching your body and identity transform — "and feeling all the effects of that crazy stuff."

A few selections from the show, including Invaders, were at Art Toronto last month, where Cindy Phenix, another artist represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, raved about Gattor's drawings while speaking with CBC Arts. Phenix said she was obsessed with Gattor's "sense of narration," a quality the self-taught artist has long been known for. 

Born in Canada, but raised in Marseilles, France, Gattor moved back to do a masters in museum studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. Just before the pandemic, while finishing her program, Gattor began posting artwork online. "You get addicted to the like button," she says, but she's managed to maintain her anonymity, even as her public profile has grown, leading to exhibitions in Toronto and Montreal. (Her surname's a pseudonym — a franco-reptilian pun she's been using since high school. "A lot of people, even close friends of mine, thought it was my real name," she says.)

Gattor's drawings, whatever the subject, share the same spooky DNA. The settings are usually familiar and homey, but always too discomfiting to be cozy. Children cuddle with man-eating pets. Girls build sand castles with cremains. Like Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies, the Allie Gattor universe is a Victorian nursery-rhyme world full of comically malevolent chaos and lethal consequence. 

And little wonder; Gattor grew up on classics with a twisted sensibility. Through her dad, the young Gattor discovered Roald Dahl, Ivor Cutler, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Heinrich Hoffman's Struwwelpeter. (It's a "weird, weird kids' book" from 19th century Germany that's famously influenced goth godfathers including Tim Burton and the aforementioned Gorey.) On the visual side of things, she's long been a fan of Aubrey Beardsley, Marcel Dzama and Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight — among many others.

"I'm pretty much just inspired by daily life," says Gattor. "I've always liked finding little bits of humour in everyday mundane situations and conversations," she says. "My brain has some kind of algorithm that life gets passed through. It kind of mashes up different bits and pieces and combines them into a drawing."

"I like to people watch. Maybe that's creepy. I'm not trying to be," she laughs. While working on Nesting, she simply spent more time "people-watching" herself.

In Stroll, one of the works appearing in the show, two mothers pass on the street, blissfully unaware of their babies' true, goblin nature. In Gravid, Gattor's meditation on morning sickness, a scowling woman clutches a toilet bowl, her hair pulled to the ceiling by a pair of ominous crows.  

"The characters, even though they look different sometimes, are usually just a version of me with a different haircut," says Gattor. "There was just so much to draw about."

Allie Gattor. Nesting. To Dec. 20 at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal. www.huguescharbonneau.com