Writing

Mooching around a gallery is my favourite way to spend an afternoon and writing a novel set in the art world gave me carte blanche to visit every exhibition and read all sorts of art books.

I had seen Barbara Hepworth’s retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2015 and something about the small scale and smooth surface of her sculptures that lodged in my brain. From doves to amorphous marble shapes, they were all eminently strokable and almost portable.

Once I discovered that Hepworth was a working mother and had been abandoned, albeit briefly, by her partner after she gave birth to triplets, I was captivated.

It was the 1930s and they were in an open relationship.  Perhaps Barbara had an inkling that he was always going to return to his wife in Paris.

How did she even find time to brush her teeth let alone sketch or paint? She was alone with three babies in a basement with a cracked window and a dodgy boiler. Her talent and strength in adversity astonished me. 

I set the action of Painting by Numbers in the 1970s, when it should have been easier to work as a female artist. Women’s Lib was a nascent force, the pill was available, women could get their own credit cards and Shirley Conran said life was too short to stuff a mushroom.

Margot, the wife and mother in my novel, is also an artist. She has managed to create intricate pictures in tiny increments of time - while trying her best not to overshadow her husband. But when her talent is recognised, their family life implodes.