By using a medium that is unpredictable and whose surface is all but smooth, I express the aging process or how the “face erodes.”  With each layer, each pass of the brayer, the image begins to degrade. In these monoprints, I layered images of myself at various ages. The older images are more degraded than the younger ones. The manipulated surface shows mottled colors. The intentional use of a cool-to-warm gradient conveys the character of most young women at this age. Memories of myself at this age are not nearly as warm and caring because 20-somethings are usually more self-centered. As I aged, my essence warmed, making me a much happier and more caring person. (#1) The same image is used again in subsequent prints in this series, but the energy of the marks made by the brayer covers the image with raw sienna in #3,  to express my anger and frustration at lost years and bad choices. The last step was to pull the eye out, because it is so powerful in this photo, it looks straight at the viewer as a warning. Lastly, the image on the right (#4) is the one that most expresses the idea of how our personal image, and some may say beauty, fades as we age. In #4, the image on the far left is the clearest, as it is the oldest memories that are the clearest, and it is when we are in our prime and look our best, free from blemish and wrinkle. This process is not intuitive, so there's a lot of experimentation and trial-and-error, quite similar to aging! 

This triptych of layered images of multiple versions of myself looks at the inability to accept aging. Some layers of color, and some are black and white. There are multiple layers, representing multiple ages, and the activity of trying to hide my age by lifting and pulling at my wrinkles to see what it might look like if I had plastic surgery. The three images show the process of aging from young(L) to older (M), to older, with a young self incorporated (R) into the composition. The image on the left implies that when we are young, we dream of being older, but it seems so far away. The black-and-white separates the time periods from old to new. The image in the middle is just my older self, in a fury, trying to correct what gravity has done to my face. The frantic imagery of the layers shows movement through its transparency. The edges are left rough to support this same concept of being out of control. In the image on the right, the younger self in black and white is layered over the aged self, implying that the younger self is still within me, just beneath my age. I tried to capture the disjointed feeling of aging and the sense of powerlessness to reverse it. The use of transparency was a way to synthesize the frantic movement of being out of control. The use of color vs. black and white helps to tell the story of the passing of time.

I fell in love with the collagraph process, followed by a drypoint etching. Continuing my inquiry into aging, I examine breath from different angles. So much can be told by our breath—stress, meditation, passion, fear. At the time I made this piece, I was struggling with my oxygen levels, which inspired this piece. My difficulty with my O² really disturbed and scared me. It was a reminder of my mortality. While at the same time, I grappled with the fragmentation in myself of what it means to be a woman. Who or what is the "choker?" I have left a lot for the viewer to decide. Is this pleasure or pain? Does the hand rescue or push down? Sometimes, we don't know until later.