Art & Love

Art & Love: My Life Illuminated in Egg Tempera

“She paints the world she knows—taboo, tender, and utterly

alive.”

Art & Love is an intimate, unflinching

memoir of an artist’s life shaped by the counterculture of the Sixties

and beyond, devotion to craft, and the quest for mastery and

lasting love.

In the face of self-doubt and romantic intrigue, the author commits herself

to the demanding practice of egg tempera painting—a rare art form she considers

her artistic soul.

Her journey moves through communal living that ranges from the benign to the

cult-like, and forays into San Francisco’s sex underground. In the 1980s, her

work as a nurse during the AIDS epidemic becomes a defining force in the book,

inspiring frank visual and narrative depictions of death and dying, intimacy,

and bodily experience that will resonate most with unsqueamish

readers.

Luminous artwork appears throughout the book, documenting the passage of

time and adding a rich visual layer to the narrative. As the author’s growth as

an artist unfolds, her pursuit of egg tempera painting becomes a metaphor for

the resilience and self-discovery that sustain a creative life.