Boomers of Monterey County is my currently ongoing year-long portrait and essay project, made possible through a generous 2023 Individual grant from the Arts Council of Monterey County. I will continue to add portrait images to this gallery in real time as I complete them. The project involves interviewing and painting the portraits of a dozen or more residents of Monterey County, California, where I also reside. Residents born between the years of 1946 and 1964 qualify for my project - Baby Boomers, the generation born in the immediate wake of World War II who now represent nearly twenty-one percent of the U.S. population. Project participants will represent diverse ethnicities, cultural traditions, gender orientations and socio-economic backgrounds. These portraits along with corresponding biographical essays will be the focus of a public art exhibition at a gallery venue as yet to be determined.

The Boomers project enables me to apply my magical realist visual style to portraits of an aging demographic in which I the artist also belong. At a time where “Boomer” is a word some consider an epithet, I intend to convey through my project that this generation still matters historically, economically and culturally to the continued well-being of this country and the world. It’s message to those who come after it deserves to be seen and heard.

The project serves as a visual and oral retrospective of individual accomplishments, the unique challenges this generation faces and reminders of the commonalities shared with younger folks as well. This project also serves to explore the ethics of portraiture, the ownership by individuals of their images, the implied vulnerability versus empowerment of the person who is “seen” as opposed to the one who gazes, power imbalances between painter and subject and how this relates to gender and class.

Unlike traditional commissioned formal portraits in which the posed sitter is the clear subject, my aim is not for strict photographic likenesses as much as expressing my perception of another person’s inner character and the choices I make to graphically render my observations of that person. I believe that a portrait is a three-way conversation among the minds of sitter, artist and ultimately the viewers of the portraits at any given time.

I envision rendering these portraits with mixtures of acrylic, oil, spray paints, collage and other graphic materials in as experimental and bold a visual style, tightly or loosely, literally or fantastically as my interpretation of the sitters and their environment dictate. I desire these new portraits to be as much a revelatory surprise to me as to my sitters and the public viewing them. I anticipate that this creative art project could be the most challenging for me to date.

If you’re a member of the Baby Boomer generation, reside in Monterey County, California and are interested in participating in this project over the next twelve month period, I invite you to contact me at info@edwardmcorpus.art. Subscribe to my Art of Dreams newsletter to keep abreast of this project and upcoming exhibitions.