Monique Donckers (61)

Monique writes:

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2008 at the age of 54 ( I was about to throw a big birthday-party as my year of birth is 1954, but this turned out differently). I had a mastectomy and chemo and radiation treatment.

I had many difficulties getting used to the one-breasted-body, and the boldness. It was hard to deal with the person in the mirror, so I started to collect wigs in all sorts of colors and shapes, and took photographs of every transformation of my body during the 8 months of treatment.

I am a sculptress really, but as I was too sick to do the heavy work, I tried to make some oil-paintings from the photographs that I took.

So this is what you see here, a story of a short period in my life, where the body changed drastically, and where I became estranged from both my body and myself.

I am happy to say that today I feel re-born, this whole experience has made me very much more aware of ‘life’.

www.moniquedonckers.be

Cristina Taniguchi (60)

-Dimension of fear-

80x180cm, oil on canvas, 2010

CROW

Crow. I get distance.
The clouds dark beyond timeless
Sphere.
Obliterated wishes.
I screw life.

Crow it is you I find
Hang yourself.
Do it for I cannot wait to see
Your eyes frozen
for a thousand times.
I keep denying life, for I …dead.

Crow. Dead I am for multi-cycles
of life span.
Fitted against oddities.
A lonely soul
Who dreams of timeless
Memory that consoles
No boundary of sanity

Crow. You could have accounted
the beginning of light and dark,
of the scariness of space,
of how it feels to float between ages,
and… the river of time.
My river of time goes here and now.

Crow. Nowhere could I set my feet
Grounded
For there is nothing to grip.
If there was a soul it should be mine.
But on my own I comprehend that exit
is an illusion
My soul does not response against this
truth.
Crow.

©Cristina “Kitty” Taniguchi

Heather Horton (59)

-Self Portrait, Acute-

-Self Portrait, Poignant-

-Self Portrait, Renewal-

Heather writes:

The body is a landscape constantly in motion. Like tectonic plates shifting our skin, bones and beings are always on the move. I aim to capture a moment of that transition, be it painful or joyful. I seek to look into my own eyes when I work on self-portraiture and examine just what is underneath it all, literally. The layers of paint really are like skin...they are organic and never straight...always arcing, always softening, always pushing ahead or receding back. It is those continually fluctuating moments that intrigue me the most and beckon to be caught on canvas...

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heatherhorton.com

Sejal Patel (58)

Red, Purple, and Blue (2003-2004)

Red, Purple, and Blue is a performance-based photo/video installation on the implications of color: culturally, socially, and psychologically. In Indian culture, red transforms the life of a girl, as she is surrounded by the color red on her wedding day, bringing her love, strength, prosperity, and welfare. Despite my American citizenship, as an Indian woman it is expected that I marry and the marriage be arranged. The concept of arranged marriage is not foreign to me, but its familiarity does nothing to limit the horror behind it. The progression from Red to Blue is a remedial realization of self and its capabilities after experiencing the absence of self and identity. I use the colors as a means to initiate a conversation. A conversation about my life’s dreams, fears, and confrontations. I see the three colors as shades of my different moods or the illustrations of my emotional stance through the different stages of my life.

Click RED to watch the video

patelsejal.com

Andrea Bonfils (57)

Andrea writes:

My work is reflects an appreciation of the balance of nature and how we are intertwined. Our ability to heal and effect change, is in my view, synonymous to our relationship with the natural world.

www.andreaartstudio.com