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Creativity Helps Keep Your Brain Flexible

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The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM)’s ninth annual Mega exhibition, “Golden Blessings of Old Age/Out of the Mouths of Babes” of Old Age” is a study of late-onset creativity that aims to explode rigid and ridiculous notions of what old age should be by presenting the work of artists who began making work in their 60s, 70s, 80s and well beyond.

Prevailing perception paints old age gray, pockmarked by diminished capacity, and childhood as golden, carefree and filled with promise. But creativity is not the exclusive province of the young, nor wisdom of the old. Visionary-or self-taught-artists liberated by their age create stunningly colorful works and exuberant worlds.

“ Golden Blessings” artists include the world-famous Grandma Moses and whirligig master and farmer Vollis Simpson, who began making his world-renowned, multi-ton whirligigs at the age of 60 because “I just had a lot of junk and had to do something with it.” Other exhibition highlights include the self-portraits of Elizabeth Layton, who began drawing at age 68, after severe depression, electroshock therapy, and her son’s death from liver failure. She took one lesson in contour drawing, in which the artist draws the subject without looking down at the paper. Working up to 12 hours a day and aided by a hand mirror, Layton began a series of more than 1,000 self portraits. She initially depicted herself as a wizened hag, but over time began to draw herself as a livelier, more confident individual, potent testimony to the healing power of her own creativity.

Running until Labor Day 2004, “Golden Blessings” also features memory works by late-onset visionaries who begin making art motivated by the urgent sense that if they’ve got something to say, they’d better say it now. Then 80-year-old Harry Lieberman, for example, began painting one day when his chess partner failed to arrive at the senior center, beginning a 25-year career painting scenes from his youth and his religion. Lieberman said his second career put him “on top of the world,” though as a precaution he liked to paint on five canvases at once. “At my age, I can’t afford to wait for the paint to dry,” Lieberman said at age 102, while serving as artist-in-residence at a California high school. He died, painting till the end, at age 106.

Located at 800 Key Highway on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, AVAM (www.avam.org) is the official national museum for the best in self-taught artistry, recently ranked #4 on a list of the Top 25 Museums in the United States. AVAM is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m

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