Fran’s Story: My biggest achievement in my life has been going to college in my mid-40s. Everything I did up until autumn 1995 led me there, and subsequently it has taken me in all sorts of directions, for which I am eternally grateful. I was ecstatically happy learning about printing on paper and textiles as one of our first modules. I remember coming home with inky black fingers that I couldn’t clean.

Three years later, immediately after graduating, I was at an event at our children’s school. My friend Chris introduced me to a lady and explained that I had recently graduated from college. She asked what my degree was in. When I replied Printed & Woven Textiles, she seemed at a loss for words and simply turned away. Clearly she did not consider that a valid degree. What, I wonder, was she expecting – English, languages, maths, one of the sciences? Even though the careers tutor at college had explained that our degree could take us anywhere, this rebuff stopped me in my tracks. My euphoric balloon was immediately pricked.

Nonetheless, I was still riding fairly high when, a few weeks later, I bumped into my City & Guilds tutor at an exhibition. Betty commented that I would soon come down to earth with a bump – and she was right. Erroneously, I had assumed that having completed a life-changing and character-building three years of study, I would go on to reach even higher goals. Nope. It seemed I had to peel myself off the floor and start all over again…

How I created the artwork: I had been given several old wine boxes from a friend who knew that I like to use recycled objects in my work. I painted them white and created 5 different small wall sculptures, as I prefer to work on several sculptures at the same time. I quickly realised that the box format was ideal for expressing the feelings I had about being a mature woman and often being underestimated by others.

Artwork Title: Don’t Put Me In A Box! Wood, acrylic, acetate, paper, found nails 30cm x 19cm x 10cm

Gillian’s story: When I agreed to participate in Carolyn’s project “The Stories of the Mature Woman’ I did understand that it would offer me the opportunity to reflect on the woman I am now – however I think it will be a far more challenging experience than I first imagined!

I have moved house 17 times and when I arrive in a new place I am often asked ‘where are you from?’ I never really know how to answer – so I guess I am from all the places I have lived as well as being an Irish woman living in the UK…

Liz’s story: What  advice would I now give to my younger self?  The one that didn't know how  life would teach me the things I needed to learn?

Maybe -  play' your own kind of music', dance, sing, paint – and be kind.  I was then  quite fragile, self-conscious,  inhibited  -  now I'm a grandmother to six, aged between 4 and 18, a daughter to my mother who is 98, a sister, and a wife of 52 years. And finally I have danced, sung and painted.  Still trying to be kind  - but I forgot as a younger person that that included to myself. But I feel immense gratitude for what I have and what I have done – and where I've been. Of course I feel the losses over the years of much loved relatives and friends who went before me. So I'm even more glad to be here enjoying myself.

My younger self was a member of Friends of the Earth, Compassion in World Farming, and CND – its now Friends of the Earth,  Green Party, Greenpeace and Oxfam. I was due to have an exhibition at the Palestine museum in Bristol (now no more, ironically) when lockdown started. It was to raise awareness, and funds. I did show the paintings elsewhere and I am grateful to those who bought them.

When I was working in Fine Fare supermarket (long gone)  one of my many jobs as a teenager (selling flowers, petrol pump attendant- when such a thing existed, Woolworths when that existed) I met a boy who I married some years later, by which time he had become a Chartered Accountant .

I had also, when at college,  worked as an usherette in the Odeon cinema (Worthing) – I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 40-50 times at least, but I could watch it again now quite happily. Watching a film that many times teaches quite a lot if you pay attention. I still go to the cinema for films I want to see on a big screen, and for old times' sake – and the communal experience.

Carolyn’s story: I am 68, a mature woman and an artist.  I’m post-menopausal, white, English, middle-aged, middle-class, heterosexual - and I’m learning to be proud of who I am now.

I’m also a mother to two beautiful daughters, a wife of 38 successful years and a grandmother.  And I do not want to be ignored, unheard or unseen, have no relevance or considered to be no longer needed.

Old age in our Western society is often seen as declining, fading, shrinking or being reduced.  Being a woman now presents a significant paradox, marked by an accumulation of valuable wisdom, experience and resilience, alongside persistent challenges like ageism, sexism, declining health and societal expectations to remain perpetually youthful.  There is a sense of negative body image, increased poverty, anxiety, mood changes and physical frailty.  Other women can be our worse commentators and judges and we notice this and feel it and it feeds into our sense of worthlessness and loss of validity and identity. Social media plays a toxic part in exacerbating the notion of youth and beauty…

Diary of a Gardening Life…

Anigna’s story:I love being outside. At ten years old I live in the garden, climbing trees, building camps and dens, staying out until the light fades and I am finally called indoors. Even then, the garden feels like a place I want to explore. It’s where I belong. I play house and plait grass to make bowls; in school where the ground is drier, I mould stairs out of the sandy earth and am scolded by my teachers. I am not a teacher’s pet and school is difficult for me.

By fourteen, I enjoy raking leaves into piles in rows across the lawn for my father. There is a passion fruit flower, a climber, that produces one bloom each day. My father and I cut the flower and take it in to my mother. I am fascinated by the way a new bud opens each morning and dies by the evening If we don’t cut it…