Older Artists Versus Younger Artists

Reflecting on what it means to be an older artist, I have never worried about my age, which I think is an attitude of agelessness, which I am grateful to have inherited from my parents.

Having returned to University to finish my degree at 56 years of age, it would have been easy to give up on my dream of obtaining the Bachelor of Fine Arts I had started so many years ago in the early 70s. Though I certainly had my challenges, and struggles to overcome, I never seriously considered throwing in the towel, regardless of how difficult my situation was from time to time. It all just made me even more determined in wanting to fulfill this goal, as it was what I was passionate about.

The fact that I was 56 when I became a mature student, and graduated in at the age of 59 never felt like a disadvantage, but an advantage, because I wasn't distracted, and could focus on the tasks at hand, more so than when I was much younger art student.

I know there are many artists I greatly admire, whose art is just as compelling, if not more so, once they had matured in years. Some of these artists I know, and are my personal friends.

Recently I heard of a book written by Martin S. Lindauer, entitled AGING, CREATIVITY, AND ART, A Positive Perspective on Late-Life Development.
 Lindauer, states that research indicates creativity increases in quality, and in quantity, over an artist's lifetime. Productivity peaks age 60, and the quality of the creative output remains constant and steady, well into age 70 years of age.

Artist's who create work well into their 80s have a quality of work rated higher than it was during their 20s and 30s.  Lindauer purports that there are seven characteristics that distinguish "old artists and late art from young artists and youthful efforts." 

• "Older artists have more knowledge and are less career oriented.
• "They also have less energy - the only case where older artists were at a disadvantage to younger ones..."
• "...which they compensated for with greater maturity, concentration, and self-acceptance."
• "Older artists were also less critical than their younger counterparts."
• "However, in two areas, creativity and experimentation, older artists were seen as equal to younger practitioners." (2003, pp.187-188)

When the so called "Old Age Style" might emerge, Lindauer wrote, "...the 60-year-old artists, and many of the 70-year-olds who were studied, were 'too young' to have an old-age style."


 I especially admire those women considered the Grand Dames Of The Art World.

 I have no "Old Age Style" but I intend to age creatively, and gracefully as an artist with an attitude of creative agelessness.

96-year-old Lebanese artist Salou Choucair

Labyrinth Versus Maze

Kabala Tree of Life - Catherine Meyers

 
 Do you listen to late night radio? Yes? No? I have listened for many years now, and I hear the most interesting items that often aren't broadcast on daytime radio. Last night I heard about a labyrinth built for a park in Sydney Australia. Seems like a whole lot of money went toward this project, $500,000 grand, which one could question. That said, the final project was pretty remarkable and beautiful.

Most think the meaning of labyrinth and maze are interchangeable. I never really thought so much about it until now, and I now realize they are not the same thing, and I find it really interesting to understand  why they are not the same.
There in a plethora of information about the difference between a labyrinth and a maze. What I have generally concluded, is that mazes are meant to confuse and frustrate, whereas labyrinths are made to provide rest, and a serenity to the visitors.

I've always been very drawn to Sacred Geometry.   Mandelas and labyrinths are similar in their spiritual connection to sacred space, or to the path to the Divine and the balance between our natural environment. The circle is seen as being a symbol of wholeness and spiritual quest, or journey.

The spiritual principles behind the idea of the labyrinth are ancient, and compelling. The site Labyrinthina gives a detailed, mythical, and a historical overview of the meanings.



History of The Labyrinth - Sisters of Providence or Saint-Mary-Of-The-Woods

People from ancient and modern times have long looked to the labyrinth as an archetypal symbol of journey and spiritual renewal. Evidence of this dates to 4500 B.C. A figurine from the Ukraine, with a labyrinthine pattern, dating 15000 to 18000 B.C., was discovered by the archeologist Marja Gimbutas, who concluded the pattern may have predated the actual labyrinth.
Certainly, labyrinths are found in Greek mythology, Peruvian symbolism, Native American artifacts, and in Sweden, Finland and Estonian cultures. Legend says fishermen walked them slowly in order to entrap ill-intentioned trolls. Ancients believed the intestine was the uterus or womb or birth canal; therefore, the labyrinth symbolized the death that will come and the death that preceded birth, both naturally and spiritually. The labyrinth at Crete contained 272 stones, the same as the average number of days in the human gestation cycle.
Christian labyrinths (the earliest of which may be in the Church of Reparatus in Algeria, 400 A.D.) may have come to be used as a substitute for making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for those who could not go to Jerusalem. People imitated the journey in a faux pilgrimage, but they were also engaged in a journey understood to be both spiritual and real. The Cathedrals at Rheims (1240), Amiens (1288) and Chartres had labyrinths, all situated in the nave. Moving out of the labyrinth has traditionally been understood as symbolic of the process of rebirth or resurrection. From the day of our birth — we journey.
Adapted from “Labyrinths from the Outside In,” Schaper, Camp; Skylight Publishers, VT

Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth

Rememberance Day - Wilfred Owen

 

Wilfred Owen

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

A

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 

Only the monstrous anger of the guns. 

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle 

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; 

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all? 

Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes 

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. 

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; 

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, 

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

While attending Mount Allison University from 2009 - 2012, one of the very best things I did, was  to take a English Literature course from Professor Emeritus, Michael Thorpe.

 I was never a huge poetry reader as I hadn't been exposed to a lot of it in school growing up. But after I enrolling in this class, and from that time forward, I changed my perspective toward poetry and about war. 

The language of poetry helps us to understand the human condition, as it is a living thing and can change our lives.

Thanks to  Professor Thorpe, I developed a deeper understanding of war, the suffering it brings, and it disturbed me more profoundly trying to comprehend why we are such a warring species. The above poem by famous war poet Wilfred Owen especially, touched me deeply. 

This Remembrance Day, I pray for peace in the world, and for all the those in service, and victims of war, past and present, and for all of their families.

Woman of War - Catherine Meyers

A New Way To Think About Creativity

I really thought long and hard about posting anything about the recent media reports concerning the past host of Q. Frankly I don't even want to repeat his name, because I found it all extremely disturbing. I had been a long time fan, and often wrote blog posts referring to him, to his guests, and the topics that were broadcasted on this program.
I understand that a host is not the show or is it? The situation has left me with feelings sadness, and with many serious unanswered questions.

Being in an abusive relationship myself, in the past, I understand very well, why these women did not come forward. If an individual has not been in an abusive situation, it is easy to sit in judgement.

What became eminently clear to me, is how abuse, particularly against women, is still insidiously rampant in our so called civilized society, and I hope perhaps the one good thing that, will result, is an ongoing open dialogue, that urges and enables much needed change.

I certainly don't know what the answer is, but silence is not. Men need to engage in proactive and actualized change, both  politically and in socioeconomic way. We can't change any one but ourselves and we all need to change.

Gender roles need to be more flexible, and I believe because of the stereotypical rigidity of gender roles that still exists in society, this contributes to misogyny and abuse.

I never considered the meaning reflected in the follow quote I found today, from a very compelling article in Brain Pickings today. It discusses and reflects the relationship, and connection between creativity, gender and having an androgynous attitude, that transcends, and is beyond one's physical appearance, and wanting to look like or be David Bowie.

“Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.”

Because I study Greek Mythology through the Mythic Tarot, I immediately thought about the last card in the deck, The World , symbolizes and reflects much of what I think about androgyny. 

 Hermaphroditus

• son of Hermes and Aphrodite
• The nymph Salmacis desired him, but he wasn’t interested in her. When he was bathing in a pool, she embraced him tightly and called to the gods to never let them be parted. They were then fused into one being with both male and female characteristics
• the experience of being whole
• symbol of the potential integration of the opposites within one’s personality
• this wholeness is an ideal that is out of reach of imperfect humans; but it can see glimpsed whenever there is a state of inner healing because warring parts of oneself have at last come together and some inner resolution has brought peace

Perhaps if we develop creativity, and a more androgynous attitude, individually, and collectively, we might have a more empathetic world, with less misogyny and violence, and perhaps women would feel safer to break their silence.

How Frida Kahlo Made Me Think About Life and Death

 
Recently my childhood life long friend lent me a wonderful little book about my favourite artist, Frida Kahlo. The book, Frida Kahlo Painting Her Own Reality is written by Christina Burrus and published by Abrams, New York.
It is a fairly in depth biography along with wonderful coloured illustrations of Frida's paintings and photographs depicting her life. There are her intimate diary enters and letters giving a real sense of who she was.

What I've mostly thought about Frida Kahlo was the way she fully lived her life and how death was so often a present theme throughout her subject matter in her paintings, while simultaneously, she had great passion for life, and for her painting.

Perhaps Frida was an atheist of conviction, though this is not completely clear, however one can not help but feel some how, a strong presence of the divine, the spirituality of the goddess, with an otherworldly quality in many of her paintings. I can't help but feel her Mexican heritage and culture, along with her mother's staunch Catholicism and her father being Jewish must have been a significant influence on her spirituality or opposition to it.

The Dream - Frida Kahlo (1940)

 Her Mexican heritage I'm certain, shaped her level of comfort surrounding the acceptance of death as being, just a part of life. As seen in her painting The Dream (1940) it reflects how she was very conscious of having to live day to day with the possibility of her own death.

She stated to Alejandro immediately after her accident ' death is dancing around my bed all night long'. All of her paintings reflected an obsession with death during the period after her separation from Diego. As well, understandably the loss of all her children, she could not carry to term, was a source of great depression, and sorrow for Frida. The fine and precarious thread between life and death must have been ever poignantly present.

I believe because of Frida's suffering, she lived her life as fully as she possibly could, seized the day in spite of, and perhaps because of her sorrows, heartache and pain, she loved life itself, with such passion, that one can not help but be inspired by a woman who had such a close relationship with life, because she had such an intimate relationship with death. She may not have wanted to return after her death, but she certainly will always live on always in the spirit of her paintings and the beautiful soul she was.

 Frida reminds me of Persephone, queen of the underworld. She reveals in much of her painted subject matter, the secrets of her inner life, not unlike the mysterious unconscious inner world of Persephone.

I believe Frida Kahlo's world was not full of death and darkness, but full of life and much light.

Powerful Daguerreotype - Photographs Without Negatives

Richard Learoyd, “Jasmijn” (2011), camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph, 58 x 48 in (image, sheet & mount), shown at Paris Photo (© Richard Learoyd, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco)

There are some photographs created by certain photographers, that cause you to immediately fall in love with their work. Richard Learoyd  is one such photographer, that I just found out about today. Not sure how I missed this guy!

 He has immersed himself in the traditional method of what is described as being " antiquarian of photographic processes: the camera obscura. " These traditional processes is what made me passionate about  photography, and about the process. Richard Learoyd's employs the process of photographs without negatives.

Being exposed to the work of such artists like Robert Frank, Dianne Arbus, Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sally Mann, Annie Leibovitz and my own wonderful teacher, Thaddeus Holownia deepened my appreciation, and love for this art and the admiration I have for these artists.

Being a painter I understand, and greatly appreciate the connection between painting and photography. These photographs of Richard Learoyd have that quality. Call me old fashioned, but nothing quite compares to the powerful quality of daguerreotype.

If I wasn't a painter, I'd be a photographer!

Singing Over The Bones

The Wild Woman - Singing Over The Bones - Catherine Meyers"  The Wild Woman lives where the dead come to be kissed and the living send their prayers. "

I have always been fascinated with all kinds of stories that are manifested through mythology, and tomorrow is The Day of the Dead, which originates from Aztec Mythology, and it is the celebrated holiday when the dead, family and friends are all remembered. I wish all my Mexican and Spanish friends a Happy Day of the Dead. I don't know a whole lot about Aztec Mythology, but have always been interested in ancient cultures, their stories, myths and legends, as they teach us about life, and death.

I have found it some what sad how our Western world is so out of touch with death. Death is what we all have in common, yet we keep death at arms length. Ancient and traditional cultures are much more connected with the Life-Death-Life cycle.


The myth of The Day of The Dead revolves around the underworld of Mictlan which was ruled by King Mictlantecuhtli ("Lord of the Underworld") and his wife, Mictecacihuatl ("Lady of the Underworld").
It is the most celebrated holiday in Mexico, and has become integrated with Spanish traditions, and all over the world. The goddess Mictlantecuhtli reminds me of Persephone, in Greek Mythology she is Psyche, and the High Priestess of the Tarot. The High Priestess is an image of that natural law at work within the depths of the soul. Persephone like Mictecacihuatl  is also the goddess of the underworld or the night world of the unconscious, which is revealed through feelings, intuition, dreams, and fantasies.


Within the art world, death seems to be mostly avoided, and not reflected usually within the subject matter of the contemporary artist.

The story of the Inuit myth about Skeleton Women best reflects for me the Life-Death-Life cycle.

Skeleton Woman - Catherine Meyers