As Sanja Marušić gets deeper into motherhood, her portraits on the topic are evolving right alongside her. You might recall the Dutch-Croatian artist’s stunning color-blocked photos documenting her pregnancy, newborn years, and the first year of her son’s life. Now, 2+ years into motherhood, she’s sharing her latest crop of photos, dubbed Sanja & Sasha. “My son is more and more a person who also does poses in the photos instead of just a lying baby,” she says of her most recent shoots. “So the progress and the outcome has become different because of that.”

As for how motherhood has continued to change her as an artist, she says: “I have less fears, I feel more free, proud. The birth of my son was quite a traumatic experience and I very much felt like I almost died and got to live again, that’s why I was more eager than normal to create. To create is to live. This was more in the beginning,” she explains. “It becomes a bit harder to photograph as he gets older because he has his own thoughts and desires now and of course doesn’t want to stand still. But together we make a game of it, do crazy poses, photograph his monkey toy. We laugh. The last time we did it he didn’t want to stop in the end!”

It’s this very real push-and-pull relationship that she hopes to convey in her portraits. “I like to show the very special bond between mother and child, to stand still about that. I think it’s one of the most beautiful things to experience and it’s not only about my experience. I find it very touching if I see other moms and children having an intimate moment with each other. Like laughing to each other, giving a hug, or hiding behind mom’s legs. I find it very interesting and beautiful to photograph it, to have a time capsule,” she says. “To see my son physically growing in my photos, and me getting older. Together we change, but hopefully we’ll always have the bond we have now.”

See Sanja Marušić’s latest, Sanja & Sasha, in the slideshow below.