Twilight

My long-running series featuring the elderly focuses on aspects of aging. While figurative, the artworks in this series are becoming more abstract, often as a vehicle to express the overwhelming problems people must cope with, often in silence, as they age. Not just physical and medical issues, but also dealing with attitudes of society. The demographic of my field, art quilts, is mainly older. I examine our concepts of beauty: where do we find beauty and how do we determine what is beautiful? I find the reactions of the audience to my work interesting and, sometimes, perplexing.

As night falls, the woman crosses the street. She has gone out in just her red sweater and bedroom slippers, oblivious to the cold and ice on the cobblestones. Finding inspiration in the streets, I collect images of real people who are anonymous to me. I develop them as characters and create stories around them. I am particularly drawn to the elderly, who are so often isolated and invisible. The woman caught my eye for her meandering path, wild wind-tossed hair and especially that she was out on the wintery street in nothing more than her thin red sweater and slippers. No one noticed her or maybe, as they often do, they just ignored her.