I recently completed a commission artwork for Villa Rosalie, Ozcare’s new riverside aged care development in Newstead, Australia. The artwork would be the first thing that families would see when they walked into the space. It had a very specific job to do: to help families feel welcome. To create the piece, I dove into the story behind the development, and into the life of Sister Rosalie Rendu, a Swiss nun who shared her kindness with the people who needed it most.

The beauty of life as we age

We are all getting older. Moment by moment, the days become years, and suddenly, we have lived most of our life. This is our inevitable path as humans. I believe reflecting upon the choices we make on that journey help craft us into the people we become. One of the important choices is how we care for people as they get older. I believe in the beauty of life at all ages. We all have seasons, and each season holds its delights, sadness, challenges and revelations. Each deserves honor and respect.

On a very practical level, we are setting up the systems and beliefs that will support our older selves into the future. I want to live in a world of kindness at every age, and I’m sure you do too. We need to create the world we want to live in now. That is what the people behind a beautiful new aged care residence in Newstead, Australia have done.

Creating the space for aging beautifully

Last year, I had some art hanging in the Satara Living showroom, in the designer district off James Street in Brisbane. I got a phone call from Shane Duckwitz, the Queensland Manager, to say that the team from Ozcare were interested in my work and wanted to know more. They loved a particular piece I had done, but wanted an artwork that was customised to their space. Around a week later, I met the design team behind Rendu Towers and Villa Rosalie: Ozcare’s luxury riverside retirement living and aged care development.

I already knew a little bit about retirement living and aged care in Australia and I was keen to learn more about the development and the people who would be living there. I was also interested to learn more about Ozcare and what they do for people in our community.

Designing calm, thoughtful, balanced spaces

After learning the design aesthetic we would be working towards - the space referenced colours, textures and materials found in the natural environment around Newstead, giving it a beautiful sense of place - we moved onto the concept behind Rendu Towers and Villa Rosalie. It is designed to be a space where a resident can move seamlessly from retirement living to having more support over time as as needed. The space is also designed so couples aren’t faced with living in different locations as one person might develop more care needs than the other. Dementia care is a specialty at Ozcare and the space is designed to help people feel at home. The painting I was commissioned to create would be one of the first things that family would see when they entered the aged care building. I understand that family are often worried about the people they love. The art needed to be calming, thoughtful, and help people to feel more centered.

Art that tells the story of a nun working in Paris

When I asked about the name of the development, I discovered it was inspired by the life of Sister Rosalie Rendu, a Swiss nun who moved to Paris after the French Revolution to care for the poor. I was fascinated by her story. Rosalie Rendu devoted her life to helping people who were displaced by the war, people who has no other avenue to turn to. All accounts of Rosalie talk about her charm, intelligence, creativity, and compassion. In Paris, there is a street named after her in Place D’Italie.

To create this piece, I overlaid street maps of the areas where Rosalie worked in Paris with colours and textures from the local Newstead landscape. I used a convolutional neural network (CNN) called ‘Deep Style’ to process the images and create ideas to include in the base layers of the piece. The final layer of white nets describes the connection we have as humans across time and place. The impact of Rosalie Rendu’s kindness remains important, hundreds of years later, and across the oceans. The final piece feels dreamlike, made of moving clouds or oceans, reminiscent of that timelessness. Hers was the type of love that continues to change the world. I named the piece “Daughter of the World”, and the intention is for her kindness to continue to echo into the everyday lives of the people in Villa Rosalie.