The Work

The silver lining was that he wasn’t around to vote in 2016.

When she had time to spare, like today, she would slow her pace near Bleecker Playground. She didn’t stop altogether, let alone sit facing the action. That would be a public declaration that she was considering motherhood. And she wasn’t, really. It was more a kind of abstract pondering. Like gazing at the never-ending movement of a fire or the vie

it sounds like you were his patron, and when artists take money from patrons they do so with the knowledge that the content or nature of their work might be compromised.’ Gen shrugged. ‘That’s the deal.’ ‘Then I go to

That he could only benefit from having a wife whereas she could only suffer from having a husband? That they could fuck on equal terms but anything more than that would inevitably cost her? Wives and mothers were not art. Nobody wanted to be reminded of domesticity, of mundanity, mediocrity. And weren’t all mothers mediocre? All wives eventually mu

Dirty money making beautiful, clean, distinguished money, and it all just circle-jerked back to the same tiny, narrow, limited idea of what constituted good art.

How many artists were shit to their wives and girlfriends rather than their models? Did it make a difference if the predatory behaviour took place in the home or the studio? The rules of engagement seemed to be changing fast, but the same men still went ahead and broke them.

then the man she left it for kept her dependent on an allowance from him, and even though his death could have made her rich again, she had rejected

Would a family of her own be an enrichment or a duty?

took another tiny bump then squeezed his eyes shut, rolling his hands in a tumbling motion as if he could physically will the momentum of his own memories to return.