Last week I completed the final edits on my new novel, Of Light and Love, which tells the story of a famous artist, Caro, who loses her muse when her wife dies and she can no longer paint. She has to resort to letting out a room to a younger woman, Laura, who is studying animation. It is a sapphic age gap romance, and also gave me an excuse to explore the nature of art. Naturally it required a lot of (extra) research, which was interesting, although most never reaches the page.

I thought it would be fun to include some of the paintings referred to in the book. The main picture is by Artemisia Gentileschi, who is Caro’s hero (and mine). She was an amazingly resilient woman, and despite a traumatic life she painted until old age with passion and sensitivity. Caro and Laura travel to the National Gallery in London and rave over the painting above.

Three other paintings mentioned in the book are Escher’s staircases as depicted in Relativity, which distorts perspectives and gravity; what should be coming up is going down etc. This is how Caro feels some of the time, following the death of her wife. The next painting also features a staircase, and is Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. This was one of the first representations of movement in a painting. Caro decides she’d like to paint Laura as she dances around the kitchen when she’s cooking. The final painting shown above is one of a series of paintings by David Hockney, done during lockdown on an iPad. Laura and Caro have a “discussion” about whether you can really paint using digital media. Caro is not impressed.

Anyway, fingers crossed Of Light and Love will be out in September. In the meantime if you would like a free story, do sign up for my quarterly newsletter. Follow this link http://eepurl.com/h2Bien and receive a free copy of When Hannah met Suki. Hannah and Suki are two main characters from my debut novel Warm Pearls and Paper Cranes.