As an artist, I’m eager to explore how, as older women, we relate to our planet, to each other and the world.
The assumption that the environment is self-healing is challenged. Much of my work speaks to the role of women in finding “wholeness” for the planet again.
“Disappearing Birds” (Detail)
Tree segments replaced by handmade paper in “Disappearing Birds” are a tangible expression of our paper overuse. Ice slowly melts in “When It’s Gone….” as a reminder of planetary change. The “Quilt” series references women as the keepers of history and restorers of the whole from the environmental fragments that are left.
My work also explores the changing definitions and politics of aging and what it means to be an older woman. In Western visual culture, a perennial youth-obsession combines with an absence of positive images of older women to create a perception that the inevitable social consequence of aging is decline and invisibility.
“Three Graces” 2019, Acrylic 60″ X 72″
However, contemporary women are generating their own definitions. The “Women in Red” series investigates the attitudes of twenty artists- four faces joined on each canvas- who are learning to renew, reinvent and redirect as they enter the “Third Age.” Inspired by the question of age bias, “Murder of Crows” says language matters as we construct reality about aging. Three Graces” explores moving to the margins of visibility as demi-gods; older women who bring practical gifts of balance, wonder and hilarity.
The older women in “Pages From the Book of Women” are assured and self-possessed. Invisible?…a laughable idea! The black purses in “No One’s Going Quietly,” screen-printed with text fragments from interviews with women of all ages, operate as a conversation on aging, invisibility and shifting cultural values. These works are a celebration of the magic of older women- always more fascinating at 80 than 18.