Custom placenta watercolors
to honor your full experience

painting as a way to ritualize + honor

As humans, witness + ritualization are crucial grounding to integrate significant experiences + navigate life’s transitions. As a longtime space holder for women in all embodied experiences and a lifelong artist, I am honored to offer a heartfelt, creative process that offers witness, celebration, + closure in unique ways.

Whether you are seeking to commemorate, reconcile, celebrate, or honor, the process of commissioning it along with the painting itself offer a unique space to do so. This applies whether you’ve given birth recently or decades ago, whether you’ve experienced loss in any form, or seek to revisit your own birth.

Each painting honors the magical, crucial, + fleeting work done by your placenta + you. See some of the placentas I’ve painted + more about the origin of my work below. Read more about my own placenta experience here and more about my background here. View my gallery of paintings here and below.

If you are interested in support navigating any facet of your fertility, More here or you can add on a session below.

ordering a painting | how we work together

  • Click “Placenta Painting” below to begin a commission process.

  • As you check out, you will be prompted to share the following:

    • Is this for a live birth / loss / other; include relevant dates.

    • What do you know / imagine / remember about your placenta?

    • What else would you like me to know?

  • I will email you to confirm receipt + with any additional clarifying questions. We can chat briefly by phone to discuss your story, if that is more comfortable or feels necessary for you.

    • If you feel that more dedicated space to discuss + process anything related to your fertility experience would be supportive to you, you can choose an add-on session that will be customized to you.

  • With care and attention, I will hold dedicated space for all that you share. I meditate and reflect on your story, channeling it into the unique abstract colors, shapes, and brushstrokes of your placenta painting. This is a consistent but emergent process, which usually takes me several weeks.

  • Your one-of-a-kind painting will be informed solely by your own story, yet may also surprise you. It may offer a new perspective on something you’ve lived, or feel like a family member coming back home.

  • Paintings are done with watercolor on 12 x 16” 100% heavy cotton paper + may include additional media such as oil pastel, sequins, googly eyes, gold leaf, or glitter.

  • Paintings are $400 including shipping and fees; your painting will arrive to you within 4-6 weeks of order, titled and with a brief reflection of the process.

  • Please email me with any questions: jessmack@gmail.com. I am looking forward to connecting with you + honored to paint your placenta!

The Amazing Placenta

I started painting placentas after the birth of my son, as an effort to reconcile with my own placenta. It had essentially shut down due to severe preeclampsia, causing an early emergency delivery.

As I healed + my son grew, I reflected on the work my placenta had done to bring him to me, + yet the danger it had put us both in. Painting served as a non-verbal, non-linear chance to reconcile that while enabling me to honor my experience in its vast complexity.

The placenta is a magical, mysterious, + ephemeral organ — the only one humans can grow, discard, + grow again. It exists only temporarily, developing soon after conception.

During that time it plays the crucial role of several organs, providing complete nourishment + protection for a growing pregnancy.

We all have one (or more), whether we ourselves were tethered to it in utero, or
we grew it inside our womb during a pregnancy (that resulted in a live birth or not).

Each placenta is totally unique; It never existed before + never will again. Your placenta is a fractal representation of your unique, complex human experience.