An artist decided to stop defining herself as plastic to be able to dedicate her career to the art of motivation.
An artist decided to stop defining herself as plastic to be able to dedicate her career to the art of motivation. Her name is Maria Seruya and she launched a project with the title Velhas Bonitonas (Good Looking Old Ladies), in which she paints women just as they are, even if they don’t exist. Because Maria believes that the passage of time doesn’t have to drag anybody down.
“This was totally spontaneous, it came to me, I wasn’t the one looking for it. I believe in fate, and I’m completely aligned in this project, hence why it also had the wings to fly. It wasn’t something I tried at for a long time, it came naturally. I had this idea of painting these old women one day, just like that, spontaneously, and I named it Velhas Bonitonas immediately.” Maria Seruya talks rapidly, she can handle her words, sometimes it seems as though she has so many ideas that they run over each other. Before going any further it’s important to clarify that when she says, “old women”, they’re old, meaning, people who are not young, the precise contrary to young. In this, Maria doesn’t use euphemisms. “I believe the world ‘old’ is incredibly strong. It’s not a prude word. But it is associated with a lot of negativity. Thus, it’s a word that, for a long time, was negatively connotated.” Let’s take it step by step: Maria Seruya is a painter. She has studied Art all her life, from high school to IADE, where she studied Design. “I didn’t enjoy design, what I really wanted was art”, she reveals. Throughout her academic journey, she studied many other things. “I did a course called Art Foundation Course, in England, in Bournemouth, at the Arts University of Bournemouth. More recently, I did a post-grad course in Psycho-gerontology.” She also did other courses, of ceramics, illustration, theater, drawing and painting. “I did these courses all throughout my 20s until I was 35, to the moment when I started Velhas Bonitonas.” That is the project that brings us here, to this conversation. What is this Velhas Bonitonas thing, then? Maria states it is not plastic art, nor is resumed to painting alone. What is out for the public to see is, indeed, a collection of portraits – or supposed portraits – of old women, but incredibly stylish, with strong characters that can be discovered through the details that pop, whether on their bold hairstyles, sensually painted lips, or strong and defiant eyes. But Seruya adds: “More than a collection of paintings, my project, as everything I give life to, has a mission to support, empower and strengthen women of all ages, so that they’re happy in their own process of aging and are able to live it more consciously and confidently.” That’s why she defines herself as a motivational artist.
The project Velhas Bonitonas, which was born very spontaneously, has received positive, warm, kind and even curious responses – as the one of Julião Sarmento (1948-2021), who was a neighbor of Maria’s in Cascais and her good friend. Sarmento, when Seruya complained to him about how people would ask her why she would only paint old women, motivated the painter by telling her: “Are you entertained? Then carry on. When you stop enjoying it, stop.” Maria thanked him since she enjoys doing things how and when she chooses to. However, to do what you want you need to do more than just want. You need to work for it. In certain situations, you need to study. For example, if we want to paint old people and motivate those who grow old, the least were asked to do is know what aging is. “What I’m looking for is a way to motivate women as they grow old. Except I was not born knowing what old age is and I’m not that old yet either [laughs], so I’m still discovering it a bit”, Maria recalls. Thus, she found herself motivated – to go learn. In her case and deviating a bit from her very art-oriented path, Psycho-gerontology. “I wanted to know more about aging because in the end, I’m not a plastic artist, but I’m also not an expert in aging. I’m a motivational artist. Through my work, I motivate this audience, women. I wanted to deepen my knowledge so I could send more messages across. In the end, I’m a messenger [laughs]. I still believe it is important to convey all these messages regarding ‘ageism’, especially because women are often the target to criticism when it comes to aging, suffering from that prejudice.” Maria Seruya sees this “passing of the message” as a mission. She doesn’t want to convey messages that might not be positive and that is why she decided to study, to understand what it meant to age, what that means and implies. “If we don’t invest in our own capabilities, we can’t give more. That’s why I wanted to study.”
When it comes to growing old and the troubles and difficulties it entails, the artist is not confined to generalizations. She prefers to be very clear about how aging is a unique, individual process that should not be induced based on singular cases. However, there is a problem that is more or less generic: preconceptions. “When people grow old, they suffer with a lot of prejudice. Because they can’t love, for example, because their age is not appropriate; because they can’t dream, they can’t nurture some dreams, because they shouldn’t at their age; they can’t dress a certain way, because of their age. There is a roll of prejudgments they suffer with, mostly women, who are criticized wither because they have wrinkles, or white hairs, or flaccid skin, and that brings suffering and difficulty in accepting the process of aging.” Men tend to suffer for different reasons, but that also originate on certain social paradigms. “Men, on their end, have their job’s status, they dedicate so much to their work, that’s a big focus for them and, often, with retirement, they lose their spirit, as they feel there’s not a lot for them to do. Obviously, there are activities for men to engage with, but they’re not as visible, because society has its paradigm: men work and do nothing else – that is starting to change, but what is very visible and recurrent is that, following their retirement, men tend to get caught up on the question ‘what do I do now?’” Maria also enjoys the separation between growing old from debility or illness. “There are many young people that have no youth in them because they come across very serious and complicated situations, and there are older people that are incredibly youthful. Growing old does not have to be a synonym with illness, in the same way that youth isn’t one for vitality.”
Those Velhas Bonitonas
Before anything else: why are these old women beautiful? Maria Seryua guarantees the employed adjective has nothing to do with beauty but rather with empowerment. Empowerment is, in this project, the keyword, the transversal idea. “It is about being who we are. All women have something in common, they are strong. But each woman can be strong in her own way, we don’t all have to be bossy and go around being… we don’t need to be all the same to be strong.” She states the word “bonitonas” is empowering and bares confidence. “I don’t paint angelic women, or models, or whatever falls into [that category] – I mean, I can one or two times, but I don’t do it so that they’re ‘pretty’ in a typical way as society defines it. It’s different. These women own who they are.” What they are and what they are not, since not everything in these portraits is – on the broader sense, of existing. “These old women are my creations, I invented them, they are always anonymous and imaginary. Meaning, I don’t model them after anybody, they are a total product of my imagination. Firstly, because I feel good about it, I enjoy creating, bringing something new to the world with my creativity. Besides, they’re also women who are not really well-known – they could be Simone de Oliveira, Eunice Muñoz, fabulous women, but that would be creating some form of distancing from their anonymity.” The artist prefers to create multiple possible Velhas Bonitonas with which all kinds of women can relate to.
Sometimes, people approach Maria so that the artist can turn someone into a beautiful old lady. “Many people would ask me to paint their portrait in Velhas. Meaning, to paint them as older versions of themselves. I never wanted to go down that road because besides being super easy to do it with an app, I always wanted to keep Velhas Bonitonas solely as a product of my imagination.” But one day, Seruya had the idea to do something different to what he called Retratos da Alma (Portraits of the Soul) to respond to these types of solicitations. It all starts with a session where Maria talks to the person – “I conduct an empowerment session”, she shares – to discover the skin of the Velha Bonitona of the person sitting before her. Only her. These sessions are incredibly powerful because women verbalize a plethora of things they had never even thought about and stop looking at their aging as something negative, to begin looking at it as something challenging and infatuating. “The creation of the painting truy is a co-creation”, she says. “Through the eyes of every woman and of what she envisioned for her future, following my creativity and interpretation. In the end, these paintings are a reminder for each woman of what they desire for when they grow old.” What for? “So that they never forget and always have an empowered image of their soul in Velhas Bonitonas.”
Originally published in the Time issue of Vogue Portugal, from December/January 2021/2022. Full credits and story on the print version.
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