Acerbumdulce.

Acerbumdulce (Latin: bittersweet) is an ongoing long-term series of self-portraits incorporating various mixed media and digital techniques. 

Following my 69th birthday in January 2023 I turned the camera on myself as I approached my 70th birthday. The initial photograph is my starting point, each image is then physically and digitally manipulated.

Growing old is a bittersweet privilege, one denied to so many, but ageing is also accompanied by loss along with emotional and physical changes. Youth and beauty fade, old age envelops the wearer with a cloak of invisibility.  The images, although ambiguous, are intended to shrug off my own shrouds and challenge the perception of how a septuagenarian woman is perceived.