2nd Prize Winner
Victoria Olt Gallery Drawing Award
Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2025
Senescence
Title:
“Numb I”
Medium & Dimensions:
Coloured Pencil, Copic Marker, Multiliner, Ink on cotton stock paper, 84 x 59 cm
About the Artist
Born in Adelaide, Australia, Senescence’s artistic journey began in early childhood with black-and-white pencil illustrations. At eighteen, they entered the visual arts industry, later transitioning into commercial graphic arts. Their professional path expanded beyond art, leading them to complete degrees in psychology and medicine, ultimately specialising in the teaching of surgical and medical anatomy at the University of Adelaide. After more than fifteen years in academia, a diagnosis of a brain tumor and other significant health challenges led Senescence to step away from their teaching career. This turning point marked a return to their artistic roots—this time, not within a commercial framework, but as a deeply personal exploration. For the first time, they are creating art for themselves, weaving together decades of experience in science, medicine, and visual storytelling. Senescence approaches this new chapter with curiosity and passion, embracing the intersection of anatomy, emotion, and form. They invite you to engage with their work, hoping that it resonates as much with others as it has with them.
“Numb I”: speaks to a state of disconnect between emotional and physical states. The figures eyes are desensitized to the world around them as they perform autonomously, analogous to how many victims of abuse are expected to simply go on living and internalize their experiences as though no trauma ever occurred. The same societal pressure to carry on is expressed in the figures puppet like pose and warped internal anatomy, reflecting a sense of lost autonomy in the face of one’s own response to manipulation. At the same time for many who have experienced abuse there is a freeing and transformative process in detaching themselves from their body, achieving a sense of ethereal beauty and relief in the face of decay and death.
