Making Them Visible

I’m getting really enthused with these 10 minute sketches from Googled images of elderly women. I started just as a quick bit of practice but after 4 or 5 I find myself really getting into it. There are so many beautiful older faces to choose from and it dawned on me that for me this is a feminist issue, this is an age group that is usually invisible, ignored, marginalised in our youth obsessed culture. So I’m going to carry on drawing them. I don’t know who they are, there is rarely any information about the people in the photos but it doesn’t matter; I think the important thing for me is to focus on them and draw them and make them visible through my art. I might not do one every day because I am working on other art projects as well, but I think I’ll make this a long term thing.

I’m drawing into my A4 hardbound sketchbook, prepared with brown wrapping paper, ripped and stuck randomly, to give me a midtone to work on top of, with graphite and conté crayon. This woman had an extraordinarily lined face, covered in patterns from her life’s experiences. As I was drawing, the scribbly markmaking became quite psychedelic. I want to fill the whole sketchbook with these elder women  and then maybe do something with them digitally, because otherwise it’s just about impossible to display a sketchbook without taking it apart.