Dealers, curators and gallerists are in intense competition to find the next breakout star, usually the younger the better, with contests abounding for emerging artists. But what happens when an artist passes the prime of their youth, but not the prime of their creativity? Wikipedia lists an astounding 127 names of visual artists worldwide that produced work up to the age 100 or beyond. These eight inspirational artists have found the motivation to create, every day, year after year, into their eighth decade or further, and are still inventing new ways to see the world.
Betye Saar
“Materials give me my ideas.” Betye Saar
A pioneer of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970’s, California born and educated Betye Saar is best known for her work in assemblage. A collector of found objects for most of her life Saar found inspiration in the boxes of sculptor Joseph Cornell. In her collage and larger scale installations Saar addresses the highly charged politics of race in America by reinventing images of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, Little Black Sambo and other African-American stereotypes gleaned from advertising and folklore. Paving the way for the next generation of powerful image-makers like Kara Walker, the 92-year-old Saar continues to live and work in Los Angeles.
Lois Tarlow
“Making art is a very natural thing, like brushing your teeth.” Lois Tarlow
Her strong voice laced with ironic humor belies the age of well-known Boston-based artist Lois Tarlow. She celebrated her 90th birthday in 2018 while preparing for her retrospective in April 2019 at the newly reconstructed Danforth Museum, now part of Framingham State University. It is a busy time for this prolific artist who also recently received her 3rd Pollack Krasner Grant. This grant, offered for over 32 years internationally to worthy individual artists, recognizes that “The struggle of talented artists to stabilize their careers and have time and resources to do their work is a never-ending challenge.”
Edwin Owre
“I think of my work as contemporary American landscape.” Edwin Owre
Like Mondrian on steroids, the geometric abstractions of polychrome wood in New Constructions, Edwin Owre’s 2018 solo exhibition at the Burlington City Arts (BCA) Gallery in Burlington, Vermont display an inventiveness and vitality that are the products of a youthful mind. Born in Tillamook, Oregon in 1928, Owre is a pioneer builder, an investigator of new ways to construct our lived environment. Owre, with his fellow Yale graduate David Sellers, were among the founders of Design/Build, a radical, architectural movement characterized by an improvisational attitude using natural materials and hands-on methods. The qualities that exemplify a 1960’s-1970’s Design/Build approach are still evident in Owre’s current work.
Jack Youngerman
“I like the idea that in your work you can create how you want to be, or to live.” Jack Youngerman
American painter/sculptor Jack Youngerman, best known for the saturated color of his hard edge abstractions and smooth surfaced geometric forms, first reached a broad audience in his 1985 retrospective show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He started his career as a painter, studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and in 1956 moved to SoHo in NYC not far from Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. Widely collected, the 92-year-old Youngerman is currently the subject of a film following the trajectory of the artist’s life and career being produced by photographer Laurie Lambrecht and Checkerboard Films.
