40

Artist Statement

 

This series titled "40" is a personal documentation of coming face to face with aging and specifically the realization that youth and physical beauty don't last. This ongoing series is set within the personal spaces of my home beginning in the fall of 2012. My goal is to highlight the experience of this transition from middle age to "maturity".

I turned 40 (in December of 2011). I actually spent all of my 30’s preparing for 40. There is a subtle ageist attitude toward people in their 30’s. Becuase I have always looked younger than my actual age women, in particular, in their 40's and over felt perfectly comfortable making snarky comments such as: “Oh! You’re still young” or “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you” or “Omigod, you’re still a baby!”

Many people dread turning 40 but I embraced it. I was ready and waiting to accept the 40 torches because in my mind that number has been like the mantelpiece of adulthood. Finally, I’d be one of the productive members of society…

…I didn’t realize it’s a double-edged sword.

I don’t feel “40”. Although I am not sure I know what a bona fide 40 year old is supposed to feel like. And my body’s changing faster than my mind can comprehend. In my mind, I still see that 25 year old person and I still feel beautiful and youthful. Yet the camera betrays me.

As much as I embrace growing older there is a kind of mourning that goes along with youth’s final slipping away. Sometimes I feel like I am me but in little bits and pieces – sometimes small and insignificant, flabby and scarred – my body bearing remnants of youth, my heels have been traded for fluffy slippers because my feet hurt.