Isn't beauty in the eyes of the beholder?
I've always been fascinated by the idea of creative criticism. How can you make a living critiquing art? How do you know what to look for, what makes a painting good or mediocre or brilliant? Because I’m lucky enough to have friends who are artists and because I worked for many years with highly creative people, I was driven to find out more about the world of art criticism and, in my novel, The Way Things Fall, I decided this should be the career of the female protagonist, Rachel.
In all three of my novels, painters and paintings feature prominently. In The Way Things Fall, Steven an up-and-coming Canadian artist, is one of the chief male characters. He reappears in a supporting role in In Love With the Night. My third novel, A Long Walk With Fate, concerns Aiden, a young man who is plucked from his impoverished existence in Vancouver and thrust into a whole new world of strange experiences before realizing the true promise of his enormous creative talent.
Despite the research I have done for these novels, I cannot personally claim to have any expertise in this area. To me, a painting should make you catch your breath, or it should seduce you, draw you in closer, make you forget where you are.
Displayed on this page are some of the paintings in my home that do exactly that for me. They are the work of very good artist friends - Gary Hesketh and Rhoda Payne in Canada and Alain Lélé in France. Click on any of these paintings to visit their websites and see more of their work.
How they deal with the fateful events that shape their lives
Over my three novels, three completely different women come onto the stage.
Rachel Covelli, in The Way Things Fall is a quiet, thoughtful person in her early twenties, happy with her own company and not part of the social, party-going scene usually expected of someone her age. Before she develops her career, she falls under the influence — some might say the spell — of Karl Gustav, an astronomer-Egyptologist who taps into a deeper part of her psyche. She feels he is the only man who has ever truly known her. Later, as a successful art critic, she develops greater self-awareness and self-confidence but her attraction to Karl proves to be deep-rooted and inescapable.
Amina Gamel, in In Love With The Night is only fifteen when we first meet her. She is poor, with no hope or ambition for the future. When taken in by a wealthy hotel owners, she lives a life of gratitude, very much in the shadows, and nurses a crush on one of two brothers in the family. It takes a long time for Amina to realize the power of her physical beauty and beguiling personality.
Gabriella Mazhar, in A Long Walk With Fate is in her early thirties. She is a bitter woman, believing her family does not value her contribution to the business. Eventually, this bitterness hardens into a calculated need for a husband and child and a plan to take over the entire enterprise. As the story evolves, Gabi loses her moral compass and her grip on reality.