It’s not lost on me that I bemoan the lot of the Middle Aged Woman, and her state of invisibility, whilst I feel more visible than I ever have!
I am a walking paradox. It’s like I’m saying, oh no not me, I am not saying this is ME! And yet it is.
So I grapple then with why?
I have woken up shouting, protesting my invisibility! In a peculiar way, that’s all it took. It appears invisibility is a state of mind.
Everything about this event screams my middle aged femininity! What I find revolutionary is my rejoicing in it.
For a while there, a few years back, I thought I had to change myself in order to be an artist. I did, but not in the way I thought.
I thought I might have to be a painter. Nope.
I thought I might have to understand all that French philosophy. Nope.
Turns out its both easier and harder than that….
I just have to be who I am, and talk about and work about the things that matter to me. Easy right? Nope.
That’s the hard bit.
This open studio event exposes me for exactly who and what I am.
A Middle Aged Woman.
I have new underwear, naturally.
I have bought some new clothes to make sure I feel nice.
I make sure I put my lippy on.
I’ve made cake. Lots of it.
This is what I am.
My work is shouting it.
It’s about love and loss. Light and dark. Overt and covert resentment.
It’s about sex and death. About conformity. About saying “sod it!” About acceptance. It’s about being and having a child and a parent.
I am proud that a few interesting people are interested, wanting them to look closely….
Whilst hoping they don’t, just in case they see something that’s too much of me that I hope will go unnoticed. Or, God forbid, see something of me that I have inadvertently exposed for all to see: that my new posh frock is tucked into the back of my knickers and I’m the only one not to see it.
