Look at me. I am here. Ageing, feminism and the freedom of painting

This year I paint women who have lived. Not youth, not ideals, not what a woman is supposed to be. I paint what happens when a woman steps out from under the external gaze and begins to look for herself, directly, with her own enquiring and reflective gaze. I believe that ageing is not disappearing. It is arriving into a deep connection with oneself and with the world.

What feminism means to me in art

Feminist art, to me, is not proclamations or slogans. It is a way of seeing. When I paint an ageing woman, I do not draw an apology onto her. I do not soften. I do not rejuvenate. I give her what she has too often been denied: presence, worth and her own gaze that does not look away.

Western culture continues to teach women to look at themselves from the outside. First through youth, then through the loss of it, and ageing is presented as defeat in an industrial avalanche of cosmetics. I refuse this story. A line is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of life. In my works I want to explore the feeling that has been hidden beneath the paint, covered by oil colour or by makeup.

Intuitive practice as a feminist choice

I paint in oil on pine wood, intuitively, without a plan. I etch sgraffito marks into the surface. This way of working is also a feminist gesture for me, because it is a promise to listen to what the hand and the heart already know, before the mind has time to correct or censor.

Women have been taught, particularly in past decades, that their feelings are too much. That they should restrain, soften, adjust themselves to fit others. Intuitive painting is my way of saying: No! The feeling is exactly the right size. The feeling deserves to be seen as it is. Feeling speaks of values and of being valued, or of being set aside. I paint women who have a history and who do not need to apologise for it. I explore how decades layer themselves into a woman and how the power that accumulates in a life fully lived shows itself in the face, the hands, the posture.

I do not paint weak women, for do they even exist?! I paint women who know and who grow stronger, who feel their own worth and yet live in harmony with the world around them. Wisdom dwells in the Heart. And it shows, if you only dare to look.

Do you dare?

Be well, warmest wishes, Hanna 🎀