Publication date:
19 May 2025Publisher
Intellect BooksDimensions:
230x170mm7x9"
ISBN-13: 9781835950975
Last Artist Standing shares the essays of the lives of 31 artists over the age of 50, how they have sustained their creative lives, what paths they have led, showing who contemporary artists are today.
They are mentors to other artists, having learned how to thrive and be creative through decades of life's travails. Sharon Louden wants to share these stories with the public so that their models can be replicated by all age groups, both within and beyond the art world.
This collection addresses the ability of these artists to remain contemporary as they adapt through generational shifts, the physical, financial and professional challenges they have overcome to remain vibrant and sustaining artists, and their role as inspirational models to others who may be turning to art late in their lives.
'I recommend digging into the refreshingly candid essay collection Last Artist Standing, in which artists over 50 open up about the joys and struggles of making work amid personal, financial, and creative hurdles — a gem of a resource during a time when artists continue to defy the art world’s inequities.
Is there anything more tedious than the myth of a linear artistic trajectory: “emerging” to “mid-career” to, at last, “established”? As artist and educator Sharon Louden points out in the introduction to Last Artist Standing, such mythology fuels so many outdated perceptions about artists’ relationships to success and age. This latest installment in her Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series rejects these fantasies, instead presenting something much more precious and honest — artists over 50 telling their own stories. The trove of intimate, personal essays is as varied as the voices of its contributors, among them Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq/Athabascan), Maren Hassinger, Colleen Coleman, and the late Audrey Flack. Each artist walks us down the path of their singular practices and lives, all bound together by the community they’ve cultivated along the way.'