The Spring 2011 edition of the Siouxland Magazine has arrived! I was honored to be asked to be this season’s featured artist, showcasing three charcoal drawings from my “Relative Distance” portrait series. The article reads:Relative Distance
By Terra Fine
“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” ~ George Orwell
Regardless of age, gender, or cultural background, within all of us is the strong desire to be known and seen for who we truly are and not for how others perceive us. We long to be understood as a person, to connect with another human being, but we assume no one else can possibly feel our heartache or fears or longing. Judgments are often made based on age; the young are seen as reckless and naïve, the elderly as boring and out of touch. We think, how could she possibly understand, she’s just an old woman? Or, these kids today don’t know what life’s all about. We think they don’t know what it’s like to be me.
“Relative Distance”, my most recent series of charcoal portraits, focuses on this rift between generations. Within each portrait, you see two people, physically so close, almost touching, yet the emotional distance between them seems unbearably vast. Each drawing is composed to reveal an intimate scene as if we’ve stumbled upon a moment of tension, a point in the relationship where neither person can break through to the other. Assumptions have been made; walls have gone up; there is nothing more to be said.
In the portrait “Can You See Me At All?” two women stand, faces inches apart, without seeing each other. Both entrenched in their own thoughts, the younger with piercings and heavy makeup, eyes clenched, the older with lines creasing her face and lips drawn tight. Each woman both accuses and desperately seeks acknowledgment of the other with that one simple question.
A similar scene is drawn in “How Could You Understand?” with evidence of sorrow and emotional isolation etched on the faces of two women, old and young, cast in deep shadow. There is a darkness present in these images, a sadness. As an artist and observer of people, I believe these conditions to be self-inflicted. We don’t have to feel so alone. If only we didn’t assume that our experiences were so unique, if only we saw others with our heart and not our eyes, if only we let ourselves be more vulnerable, if only we took the time to truly listen to each other, if only…
Perhaps an answer lies in the third portrait featured here, “Building Bridges”, where both the physical and emotional gaps are “bridged” by the extended hand of a child and the indulgent smile of an elder. Their eyes lock as they see the other and accept all that they behold. Perhaps it is their extreme distance in age that allows for this connection. The infant has not yet learned to be cynical and presumptuous and the elder has outgrown the need for it.
Terra Fine currently lives and works in Sioux City, Iowa. She received a B.A. in Fine Art from Western Washington University. Terra’s artwork has been recognized and exhibited internationally. For more information, visit www.terrafine.com.
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