This contemplative lithograph by Tracey Emin belongs to her Mediterranean period, when the warmth of the southern European landscape entered her practice with a new sensuality. A reclining figure is rendered in fluid, confident lines on Somerset Velvet paper, conveying the stillness and intimacy that define Emin’s most personal graphic work. The lithographic medium captures every nuance of the artist’s gestural hand — the soft tonal washes evoking sun-drenched olive groves and the ease of a body at rest. Signed, numbered, and dated by the artist in an edition of one hundred and fifty.
Emin was born in London, but brought up in Margate, she studied art in Maidstone, then returned to London to study painting at the Royal College of Art. Her early influences include Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele, although she later destroyed all her paintings from this early period.
In 1994 Emin had her first solo show at the White Cube gallery, one of the most significant galleries in London. It was called My Major Retrospective, and was typically autobiographical, Her willingness to show details of what would generally be thought of as her private life has become one of Emin's trademarks.
Although these early events caused Emin to be well known in art circles, she was largely unknown by the public until she appeared on a Channel 4 television program in 1997, despite being a serious debate show, Emin turned up completely drunk (partly as a consequence of the painkillers she was taking for a broken finger), repeatedly saying that she wanted to go home to her mum.
Two years later, in 1999, Emin was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and exhibited My Bed at the Tate Gallery. This consisted of her own unmade bed, with sheets thrown back, used condoms and period-blood stained underwear. Such shocking insights into Emin's personal life were nothing new. Indeed Emin's art is frequently autobiographical. One of her best known works, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95, is a tent with the names of everyone she has slept with sewn onto it. These include sexual partners, but also relatives she slept with as a child, her twin brother, and her two aborted children.
Although often talked about as a shameless exhibition of her sexual conquests, it is rather a piece about intimacy in a more general sense. The needlework central to this work has been used by Emin in a number of her other pieces. Another autobiographical work is the film CV Cunt Vernacular (1997). This is essentially a biography, with Emin narrating her story from her childhood in Margate, through her student years, her abortions and destruction of her early works, as well as her later, more successful, work. Emin has also worked with neon lights. One such piece is You Forgot To Kiss My Soul which consists of those words in neon inside a neon heart-shape.