ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways in which shifts between distance and proximity become a means of nuancing and differentiating group members' relationships to their ageing self. The space of Painting Words is therefore one in which the perception of, and relation to, one's ageing self can be negotiated at different moments in time. The painting presents a staged perspective of the human life course, in other words. Like Katharine's poem it also uses the landscape and ideas of physical distance to articulate the passage of time. While Katharine's poem might show us how the subject feels the intersection of mind and body, she also resisted a particular reading of her poem – one that situated its meaning within the framework of old age. Nora wrote a poem from the perspective of the artist who reads his sitter's body as a symbol of repressed duty.
