My Heart is This

Tracey Emin on Painting

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Tracey Emin talks about painting: what it is, why she does it, why it matters

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Richly illustrated with photographs of the artist and her art, here is a vivid and intimate portrait of her life and work in her own words, in conversation with art critic Martin Gayford. Emin reflects on painting – how she approaches it, why it matters to her, and how it connects to her life – and how everything has changed since her cancer diagnosis.

‘Every image has first entered my mind, travelled through my heart, my blood – arriving at the end of my hand. Everything has come through me.’

Offering a uniquely personal insight into the artist’s extraordinary life and career, Emin expresses herself in her characteristically frank, confessional style that is so familiar to anyone who has seen her paintings. This is Tracey Emin on her own terms: on learning to paint, on living her life after cancer, and relearning why painting matters to her above everything else.
Extent: 256 pp
Format: Hardback
Illustrations: 153
Publication date: 2026-02-26
Size: 22.9 x 15.2 cm
ISBN: 9780500031018
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Press Reviews

Gayford is an established confidant of painters, the artist-whisperer of Lucian Freud and David Hockney. He elicits a remarkable trove of information and opinion from Emin ... My Heart Is This is the story of how a dark stretch in her life led Emin to a new love and appreciation of paint and greater facility at the canvas. It will appeal to her many fans as well as the gallery crowd
Stephen Smith, Financial Times

A book full of heart – frank and confessional – that presents Emin at the zenith of her powers, having survived near-fatal cancer and found new purpose and conviction ... this concise, elegant and beautifully illustrated study, with Gayford’s skilful and always apposite narrative, is as thought-provoking as it is readable, and I closed it with a greatly enriched understanding of the mysterious process by which life is transmuted into art
Ariane Bankes, The Spectator

This is Emin: honest, unpretentious and endlessly fascinating
Christie’s

The structure is simple: dialogue, reflection, image. Yet within this looseness, the reader gains a vivid sense of Emin’s working environment and is influenced by the studio’s clutter and intensity, the presence of other artists, and the push-and-pull of past and present. The illustrations, generously included, do more than document; they punctuate the text with moments of pause, offering glimpses of the work as extensions of the conversations themselves
Artlyst

About the Author

Martin Gayford is art critic for The Spectator and the author of acclaimed books on Van Gogh, Constable and Michelangelo. He is the author of Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud, A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, How Painting Happens (and why it matters), Venice: City of Pictures and Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939–1954, among others.

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