Each Thursday for the better part of 2012,  I painted senior citizens at the Solon Senior Center, in my home town. These beautiful and interesting souls model for me as their friends come and go…or sit and stay, as long as they please. It is a lively demonstration of my painting skills, and an opportunity for me to plant myself in a space where new and fascinating people with stories and wisdom are always coming my way.

And the Solon Senior Center is a wonderful, busy, active and fun place where seniors can go for games, friendship, exercise, speakers, music, trips, lunch, art…in 10 years I'll be able to go for the activities, for now I'm just the painter, and very happy for the privilege.

When I had created a significant body of work from this project, there was an exhibition of these paintings at the Solon Center for the Arts in November  2012. This exhibition was called, “The Solon Senior Project: Judy Takács Paints Fascinating Wisdom”. I gave a gallery talk as welI, where I talked about this whole project and my philosophies, inspiration, as well as my specific experiences painting fascinating wisdom.

And just for the record, these retired seniors are a GOLDMINE of strong work ethics, responsibility, intelligence and truly a joy to have pose for me. They have all taken this job very seriously, shown up early (the first sign of a great professional model) and held still like troopers (the second sign) and have not complained one bit (the third sign)! 

As this collection moves forward I have retitled it “The Age of Adventure” in honor of these wonderful seniors who are embarking on their retirement with such a spirit of adventure.

Selections from this collection will be shown in August 2014 at the Gallery at Kendal at Oberlin in Oberlin Ohio.

That show will be called by its new name, “The Age of Adventure.”
See my Future Shows section for more details!