The artist has always worked in the confessional mode.
After surviving cancer, she sees no reason to hold anything back.
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She had the presence of an artist casual but half mad with determination.
And she only gets better with time, even after going through a horrific bout of bladder cancer.
Her colon keeps collapsing because there is nothing to keep it in place.
When that happens, the pain can be excruciating.
We began DMing on Instagram during the pandemic and shared our cancer stories hers and my wifes.
When we speak, we never speak about the future.
I see my art career and my life like that.
I think that Ive just been slowly jogging along.
This new cycle of paintings theyre very personal.
Theyre about your love life.
Theyre about abandonment, death, and joy.
Its this idea of being together for eternity.
Thats why these paintings are called Lovers Grave.
This work is a pouring out of my soul.
Because Ive been given the extra time, I mustnt fuck up.
I have to have this clarity about why Im doing something.
There cant be any ulterior motive.
It cant be because I want to sell a painting.
I spend a long time thinking about them.
But its also you.
Theres this beautiful long-legged woman in these images.
But I never use a mirror.
I never use photographs.
Some of the drawings of myself arent very good theyre not very academic.
Sometimes theyre very good.
It all comes from my mind, like a cavewomans drawing.
How do you feel about showing in New York right now?Really excited.
I just got the hard copy of the private-viewing card.
I was sitting in bed looking at it this morning, and I actually squeaked.
I was thinking Rothko, I was thinking Pollock, Truman Capote.
I havent thought like that for a long time about New York.
And its not just for me its for Jay.
We are both 60.
Im thinking,Fucking hell.
This is a culmination of 30 years.
I knew about all this sentimentality to do with it, but nobody else did.
Thats because it really wasnt fashionable in 1993 to be sincere.
In you, I saw somebody who was incredibly open, honest, and vulnerable.
Also, me and Sarah Lucashad a shop together.I had a longtime relationship with Mat Collishaw.
Jay showed a lot of the YBAs at the time.
So even though my work wasnt part of all of that, I definitely was.
I had a big personality and I liked to party and the YBAs definitely liked to party.
Unfortunately, that is what we got a reputation for instead of our work.
I havent got those kind of balls, and I dont want them.
Theyre too macho, theyre too big, theyre too baggy.
They drag on the floor when you walk, right?
My balls are up here on my chest, close to my heart.
I just couldnt hack it.
Im really happy with the way things have turned out.
I wasnt maybe five or six years ago.
Now Im really content with my work, how people perceive me.
Also, Im sitting here saying Im sorry.
Im sorry for the way that I behaved.
Im sorry that I didnt let you know how serious I was about art.
Im sorry that I looked irreverent, like I didnt care.
I care more about art than anything in the whole world.
Maybe I was hiding it from everybody because I was scared of being rejected.
Thats how I fell in love with your work.
I saw a painting in the early 2000s of a woman, a figurative painting.
I felt like I was hearing thoughts I shouldnt hear about what women think, feel, go through.
Whereas 20 years ago people didnt.
It was people of mixed race like me.
It was people who had suffered poverty as a child like me.
It was people who had been raped like me.
It was people like me who had not been abused but had loads of teenage sex.
She going on about rape.
Yeah, fucking right Im going on about rape because a girl shouldnt be raped when shes 13. and theyd go, Oh, she was broken into last night.
Thats how it was referred to.
I made work about this, and you know what?
People didnt like that I made work about that.
Because no one wants to admit that these things happen.
Nobody wants to admit that an 8-year-old gets sexually abused either.
Nobody wants to think about those things.
But I make work about those things.
When do you think you knew you were an artist?Ive never done anything else.
I had a couple of part-time jobs.
Like, I was so broke until the late 90s.
To me, money never mattered.
All that mattered to me was that I was an artist.
I never wanted to do anything else.
I left school at 13, then got my art degree when I was 23.
After I left art school, I did a two-year, part-time course in philosophy.
It was just brilliant.
Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch were the first artists that I really fell in love with, around 13.
But then when I discovered Schiele and Munch, that was my art.
They were my friends.
I think you two share a great, deep sympathy for women.
He said to me, Youre so obviously influenced by Matisses cutouts.
I went, No, no.
He said, Its quite obvious you are.
I went, No, its not obvious I am.
He said, All your figures are just like that with the leg up and the arm back.
I lay there on this couch like a Matisse and I said, What do you mean?
This is my body, this is me.
Are you telling me that Im influenced by Matisse because Im lying like a Matisse figure?
Are you telling me that I dont own and control my own body?
Whats quite interesting about Munch is Munch put himself in the picture.
Munch really adored and loved women but not as a muse like Picasso or other artists.
He liked them as a kind of emotional springboard.
For me, Munch was so honest and so cool, as an artist and as a radical.
Imagine: In, like, 1890, hes using lime green, cerise pink.
Hes painting these crazed-up images.
Munch is like my kindred spirit.
She came to my house and I was in bed and she came upstairs.
I said, No.
It was a moment Ive always been waiting for.
This journalist went, Oh my God.
So we talked about that then.
When she wrote her preview of my show with Munch, I was all across the news.
Its like Im sort of a mascot, like a national treasure of sorts.
The last thing they would want is for me to drop dead.
Then the other thing is no one missed me because everybody was missing each other.
I could be really ill and nearly die in private and then come back to life in public.
I was drinking Champagne, and I stood up with my glass and said, Hello, Vicar.
He couldnt see me.
I thought this was so amusing.
I went to my gynecologist next day and told her about the blood.
She checked me out and said, Whats that?
She had a mask on because it was COVID, but her face was in so much distress.
I didnt really have time to think about it all.
Youre going to have part of your vagina removed, so your vaginas going to be really small.
I said to him, Excuse me, are you saying these are bad side effects?
My friend who was with me, Cecily, shes going, Its not funny.
There had to be another surgeon that comes in to give me a second opinion.
I went, Ive got one question.
He goes, What is it?
I said, Can I get a dog?
He said, Why are you asking that?
No, you cant.
He said, Yep, there is.Theres more chance of you dying than living.
I had probably six months to live if I didnt have the surgery immediately.
When you are faced with that, life changes dramatically.
He got a desk, he got a suit, he cleaned up his whole act, everything.
He became so focused.
Its a bit like me since the cancer.
Then, after the surgery, it was impossible.
I couldnt even pour a teapot.
I couldnt carry anything.
I was about six months in bed, really.
But my studio in Margate is really big.
And I have these giant canvases all the way around and its really spacious with the most amazing light.
I still do this terrible thing: I can do a really good painting and its perfect.
Its made me think, and its made me question everything.
It sparked something from my childhood or it scared me.
The other day, I did a painting that scared me because there were these dead people in it.
Me and Harry could see the dead people, and it was like, Fucking hell.
With painting, its so hot.
Im so serious about it.
Its because the painting has become an entity.
Its become a sort of spirit that lives outside of me and joins me sometimes.
I dont care if anyone thinks thats crap or bullshit.
To me, its real.
In 1995, I was in this group show called Brilliant!
New Art From London at the Walker Art Center.
I said, Silence.
I needed quiet and contemplation for people to go inside the tent and read it.
I said, I cant put my tent there.
And Richard Flood, a curator, said there was nowhere else to put it.
I said, To my hotel.
He said, You cant take that tent out of this building.
I said, Why not?
He said, Because its insured.
I said to him, With your attitude, I dont fucking want to.
Guess what?I havent.
Youre running anartist residency and schoolin Margate.
Ive been homeless three times in my life.
When I say homeless, I mean twice with my family and once alone as an adult.
My moms family were Roma from England weve always done seances and palm reading and fortune-telling.
I wouldnt be wealthy because of what I do but because of property.
So all the time with art, I saved money, saved money, saved money.
I bought my first house in 2001.
At the same time that everybody was doing coke, I was paying my mortgage.
Im not gauche or flash.
Im always saving and diligent.
Now Im really, really comfortable and I have everything that I need, but I still love property.
I bought a really big old bathhouse in Margate and an old morgue.
Her legs are open, and theres a beautiful garden in between.
Shes a figure of a really old woman.
People were nasty about it because she doesnt look attractive.
I said, Well, isnt your mom going to get old?
Isnt your wife going to get old?
Your sister, your lover, your daughter?
But you never see women in the same way, primal, real women.
Men have one big giant ejaculation, and women come and come and come again.
One of my first and best artist friends in New York was Louise Bourgeois.
If I can be like that, it means Ive got only halfway through my career.
Tracey Emin: Lovers Graveopens at White Cube on November 4.
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