During 2006, I worked on a number of works which investigated the concepts of youth and age and the fact that the essential life–force of a person does not change. Outwardly, a person may appear to change, but, inwardly, a person at 80 is the same person as he⁄she was at 30.

Ignoring the impact of maturity and experience on any person, he⁄she thinks and acts more or less the same, irrespective of age. The life force of the person does not change, and it is this that should always be acknowledged, not the signs of superficial ageing.

I feel that the superficiality of age covers the reality of age – or the reality of the person concerned – an idea similar to my way of working with many images and many layers. All the works in this series have been built up with layers of painting and printmaking, and each individual image is, in effect, part of the final artwork, even though these images can no longer be discerned as individual images. This, I feel, is the same situation with youth, age and ageing.

Copyright © Diane Eklund–Abolins 1996–2011     TERMS