BIO

Now in my fifth decade of art practice, I have had a varied career spanning disciplines, media and genre. As a young artist, I depicted the prairie landscape using silkscreen printing as my medium of choice. In mid-career, I became passionately involved in theatre design and followed that path for many years while still maintaining my role as an art educator. Today I work out of a studio in East Vancouver utilizing a variety of mixed painting and drawing media employing the aging human figure as the focus of my practice.

Formally taught with a BFA in printmaking, a BEd in Art Education, and an MFA in theatre design, I have made art my life’s pursuit and career, and now in my retirement years my full time occupation. Always having a passion for figurative work, I find that as I age I am no longer content to portray youthful lithesome bodies that have through- out history been the subject of figurative paintings.

Older women, older couples – those often overlooked by our society’s focus on youth and anti-aging – become portrayals of beauty in my multi-layered, multi-media paintings. I work in a fairly representative style on several layers of translucent drafting film with walnut ink and oil paint. Other imagery from the natural world – birds, flowers, insects – are also employed to enhance the image and add other layers of symbolic meaning. The images are often then sliced up and rearranged in new compositions on silkscreen prints or birch panel. I find this technique is well suited to expressing the layers of narrative and intricacy that are at the core of the aging form and the heart of human existence.

VISION STATEMENT

In a culture that glorifies youth and beauty, time-ravaged bodies are hidden, denied. Yet the process of aging, the process of change, and my internal insistent demand to be my most authentic self, stands at the core of my artistic practice. My paintings question the taboos surrounding the depiction of aging bodies challenging cultural stereotypes that equate beauty with youth and search for both the outer beauty in the aging body that society shuns, and the inner beauty beneath the skin. My work confronts the dominant negative perception of aging – particularly in aging females – questioning gender and political values.

As an aging female artist, an expansion of this area of interest is my sense of identity as a physical and sexual being, confronting my body and mortality, scrutinizing and exploring what effect this unflinching gaze has on my artistic practice.

BIO

Now in my fifth decade of art practice, I have had a varied career spanning disciplines, media and genre. As a young artist, I depicted the prairie landscape using silkscreen printing as my medium of choice. In mid-career, I became passionately involved in theatre design and followed that path for many years while still maintaining my role as an art educator. Today I work out of a studio in East Vancouver utilizing a variety of mixed painting and drawing media employing the aging human figure as the focus of my practice.

Formally taught with a BFA in printmaking, a BEd in Art Education, and an MFA in theatre design, I have made art my life’s pursuit and career, and now in my retirement years my full time occupation. Always having a passion for figurative work, I find that as I age I am no longer content to portray youthful lithesome bodies that have through- out history been the subject of figurative paintings.

Older women, older couples – those often overlooked by our society’s focus on youth and anti-aging – become portrayals of beauty in my multi-layered, multi-media paintings. I work in a fairly representative style on several layers of translucent drafting film with walnut ink and oil paint. Other imagery from the natural world – birds, flowers, insects – are also employed to enhance the image and add other layers of symbolic meaning. The images are often then sliced up and rearranged in new compositions on silkscreen prints or birch panel. I find this technique is well suited to expressing the layers of narrative and intricacy that are at the core of the aging form and the heart of human existence.

VISION STATEMENT

In a culture that glorifies youth and beauty, time-ravaged bodies are hidden, denied. Yet the process of aging, the process of change, and my internal insistent demand to be my most authentic self, stands at the core of my artistic practice. My paintings question the taboos surrounding the depiction of aging bodies challenging cultural stereotypes that equate beauty with youth and search for both the outer beauty in the aging body that society shuns, and the inner beauty beneath the skin. My work confronts the dominant negative perception of aging – particularly in aging females – questioning gender and political values.

As an aging female artist, an expansion of this area of interest is my sense of identity as a physical and sexual being, confronting my body and mortality, scrutinizing and exploring what effect this unflinching gaze has on my artistic practice.

Annette Nieukerk

BIO

Now in my fifth decade of art practice, I have had a varied career spanning disciplines, media and genre. As a young artist, I depicted the prairie landscape using silkscreen printing as my medium of choice. In mid-career, I became passionately involved in theatre design and followed that path for many years while still maintaining my role as an art educator. Today I work out of a studio in East Vancouver utilizing a variety of mixed painting and drawing media employing the aging human figure as the focus of my practice.

Formally taught with a BFA in printmaking, a BEd in Art Education, and an MFA in theatre design, I have made art my life’s pursuit and career, and now in my retirement years my full time occupation. Always having a passion for figurative work, I find that as I age I am no longer content to portray youthful lithesome bodies that have throughout history been the subject of figurative paintings.

Older women, older couples – those often overlooked by our society’s focus on youth and anti-aging – become portrayals of beauty in my multi-layered, multi-media paintings. I work in a fairly representative style on several layers of translucent drafting film with walnut ink and oil paint. Other imagery from the natural world – birds, flowers, insects – are also employed to enhance the image and add other layers of symbolic meaning. The images are often then sliced up and rearranged in new compositions on silkscreen prints or birch panel. I find this technique is well suited to expressing the layers of narrative and intricacy that are at the core of the aging form and the heart of human existence.

VISION STATEMENT

In a culture that glorifies youth and beauty, time-ravaged bodies are hidden, denied. Yet the process of aging, the process of change, and my internal insistent demand to be my most authentic self, stands at the core of my artistic practice. My paintings question the taboos surrounding the depiction of aging bodies challenging cultural stereotypes that equate beauty with youth and search for both the outer beauty in the aging body that society shuns, and the inner beauty beneath the skin. My work confronts the dominant negative perception of aging – particularly in aging females – questioning gender and political values.

As an aging female artist, an expansion of this area of interest is my sense of identity as a physical and sexual being, confronting my body and mortality, scrutinizing and exploring what effect this unflinching gaze has on my artistic practice.