"Atlas Letting the Weight Settle" is a painting from Cross's series, 'Atlas is a Woman'. The painting started from a sketch that depicts the everyday weight of motherhood. The sketch and subsequent painting show a central figure who back is burdened with a world globe, with no countries on it, and many sprawling hands reaching for her. Cross was thinking about the weight that comes with raising an increasingly demanding child, whose needs are immense and whose opinions on everything are absolute. That familiar motherhood feeling, when you have multiple hands pulling you in every direction. It's like chartering an unknown land where you can lose sight of yourself. The painted figure is trying to let the weight settle, bent and buckled, but trying to not break.
