The Story Behind Kirst Herbert Art Prints

You love this more than you knew you could love anything. And you're still allowed to miss yourself.

I'm Kirsten, a West Australian artist, wife, and mother to three beautiful children. Before any of this, I trained in textile design. But it wasn't until I was housebound with three young children that I picked up a pen and started drawing again.

I loved being a mother. Unconditionally, with everything I had. And at the same time, I was lost. I had slowly disappeared into the role, and I didn't know how to ask for help, or even feel like I deserved to.

So I started drawing. Quietly. Dot by dot.

It sounds small, but it changed everything. Creating gave me permission, to call a babysitter, to ask for an hour, to take up a little space for myself without guilt. The technique I found my way to is called stippling: building an image from thousands of individual dots, one pen stroke at a time. It's slow. It's repetitive. And somewhere in that slow, meditative rhythm, I found my way back to myself.

That's where these prints were born. Botanicals drawn from the natural elegance around me, an alphabet series that grows with a child from nursery to big-kid room, and a shapes collection built on simplicity, each one designed to be as beautiful as it is meaningful, and to grow with your child rather than be outgrown by them.

I make every piece with the same values I'd want passed on to my own children: that things worth having are worth making well, that a handmade object carries more care than a mass-produced one, and that community matters, which is part of why I started In Her Words, a series where other mothers share their own honest, unfiltered stories alongside mine.

These prints were born from that place. For the mother who is giving everything, who loves this season fiercely, and who also knows she deserves space too. Beautiful, intentional space.

Your home should hold all of you. Not just the mother. All of you.

🤍 Kirst