I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.
— Pablo Neruda
Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995). Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin’s iconic tent applique chronicles every person she has shared her bed with. The list of 102 names includes lovers, her grandmother and two aborted fetuses.
The piece was first shown in an exhibit called Minky Manky at the South London Gallery in 1995. Emin, then a lesser-known artist, was featured in the show alongside Damien Hirst, Gilbert and George and Sarah Lucas. Emin’s piece was considered the highlight of the show.
Says Emin: “At that time Sarah (Lucas) was quite famous, but I wasn’t at all. Carl (Freedman, her former lover) said to me that I should make some big work as he thought the small-scale stuff I was doing at the time wouldn’t stand up well. I was furious. Making that work was my way at getting back at him. One review was really funny, the journalist had written something like ‘She’s slept with everyone – even the curator’!”
PieFace by Lisa Yuskavage
“You can’t paint and be intimidated. You have to be the one on top, and painting on the bottom.” - Yuskavage (tonight @SFAI)
Keep on this path. It may be hard, but keep questioning, keep experimenting, let go of some things if you must, and be willing to welcome something different. Whatever you do, stay with it. You’ll notice that you will start to enjoy it, and in a short while, things will start to make sense. Life will finally start to make a tiny bit of sense. Then before you know it, you will be much stronger than you thought you could be. You will be amazed at what is to come.
There’s no past tense in loving someone.
It’s either you always will or you never did.
Nothing ventured, nothing earned.
