If you depend on the mass media and fashion magazines to define human beauty you will be exposed to an impoverished and monolithic viewpoint: beauty = youth.
But one artist is turning that assumption on its head and winning prestigious awards and rave reviews for her nude portraits that capture and celebrate the aging female body — wrinkles, age spots, sagging skin and all.
A new art exhibition from painter Aleah Chapin, called “The Aunties Project,” serves as a welcome reminder that beauty exists in far more shapes and forms than the advertising world would have us believe.
Chapin grew up on an island off the coast of Washington and has been painting portraits of her “Aunties”, the women she grew up with, her whole life. She uses the natural landscape as a backdrop to explore the beauty and chaos inherent in both nature and her subjects bodies, capturing the “acute individuality of freckles on skin—or veins on a rock.”
The process of painting subjects whom she has known from birth allows her, and the viewer, a glimpse into the journey through life that each body has taken. The landscapes, at once real and fantastical, reflect the same contained and perfect chaos found on the skin.
The woman above, who is the subject of Chapin’s prize-winning portrait “Auntie“, is a friend of Chapin’s Mother’s and was in the room when she was born. Chapin has known her all her life.
Chapin said her work “examines my personal history through the people who have shaped it. On our bodies is left a map of our journey through life. The process of painting these women allowed me a glimpse of that journey and brought me into the present moment of our shared history.”
Her realist approach does not shy away from the realities of aging and boldly explores the idiosyncrasies of human flesh in later life, tracing its unique contours, wrinkles, translucence and even the ravages of diseases such as breast cancer.
Artist Daniel Maidman reviewed Chapin’s exhibit on Huffington Post and wrote of her subject’s casual approach to posing nude:
Chapin is one of the youngest artists ever to win the prestigious BP Portrait Award in 2012, which was contested by 2,187 artists from 74 countries. Her exhibit “Aunties Project” is showing at Flowers Gallery in New York until February 23.
If ChangingAging gave awards for art, Chapin would be the first recipient.
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Thank you for my healthy reminder today as I make my way through my 60′s.
I am blown away by the beauty of these paintings! I am in awe, really in awe. I am 81 and watch my body with fascination, as it does a dance with wisdom and deep presence. thank you, thank you–you have made my daty
This is WONDERFUL!!! This is why I do the work that I do about the representations of older black females in popular culture, particularly focusing on issues of sexuality/sensuality and beauty. I am just in the beginning of my graduate school phase but things like Chapin’s work gives me life and hope!
As a woman who has had bilateral mastectomies, I support all efforts that demonstrate life after surgey. I chose to have reconstruction, but many women do not. To not live to raise my children, the youngest of whom was 3 when I was diagnosed, would have been a tragedy. Living without breasts has not been.
Those are wonderful paintings. Alice Matzkin has also done some wonderful paintings of older women https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PizJjpNkULI
Thank you Aleah Chapin! I don’t think this will change younger people’s thoughts about old bodies because society looks at unrealistic ideals of bodies and expects us to stay firm forever – - an impossibility. At 68, I love my body because I see no reason not to, and because it has given me so much pleasure over the years. I swim almost daily, and see young, old, skinny, fat, average, etc., and they’re all doing what they love, and that’s what matters.