Title: Home
Artist: Annette Nieukerk
Medium: Mixed media (walnut ink, oil paint, drafting film on silkscreen print on birch panel)
How does this artwork represent healthy human aging? (Artwork Description)
My painting, “Home” (36” x 24”), is part of a larger series that evokes the intimacy and sensuality that can exist at advancing years, the intensity of emotion and longing pulling two people together, and the deep desire for connection buried in the human psyche. This image opens and exposes this couple’s vulnerability, their ideas about aging and sexuality, their constructs of who they were, and who they are now. Hinting at the identity and narrative behind this aging couple – the landscape and the prominence of the road – my painting is a visual narrative born from memories obtained from a full measure of lived experiences – loves, losses, achievements, disappointments. These lovers exist in both the past and present moment, isolated unto themselves and yet interconnected with the world around them. Their story is told both through the physicality of their aging bodies and in the images of memory, places and times past that form the world in which they now exist. My paintings attempt to challenge and break down stereotypes that equate beauty solely with youth, and confront a dominant negative perception towards aging.
Submission Category: Public