Gwen John

 
Alicia Foster
16-09-2021

Alicia Foster speaks with Catherine O’Flynn about her unusual childhood in an isolated former nursing home, growing up goth, her twin passions of visual art and literature, and accidentally becoming a novelist after being an academic.

On Location
Sue Roe describes her visits to the houses of some famous artists, and reflects on how these buildings and their surroundings are portrayed in their respective works.
Sue Roe — The Best Advice I Ever Received
'For non-fiction, you can't do anything chaotically, it doesn't work. You have to be organised from the word go, or at least once you've had what I call 'the initial hunch'.'
The Story In The Attic
Researching her study of the artist Gwen John, Alicia Foster was struck by the attic setting of many of John’s paintings. This led her to a wider exploration of the role played by the attic room in art and literature.
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Woman
In researching her biography of the artist Gwen John, Sue Roe sifted through hundreds of letters and notebooks, in archives held in Aberystwyth, Paris and New York. From these, she came to know a very different woman from the fragile recluse of popular myth.
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