Eileen McHugh - a life remade

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Eileen McHugh - a life remade - is a novel about a sculptor whose creative life ended in the 1970s. She left no work, but now an archive of her notes and sketches has come into the possession of Mary Reynolds, who is determined to resurrect the artist's life and reconstruct her work. She contacts people who knew Eileen as a child and as a student in London. She follows the artist on a hippie trip to Thailand. Via these partial memories, she recreates the artist and her work.

Literary Fiction art london student hippie sculpture

Chapter 1

Remaking a life

Let us imagine an artist who struggled to complete anything, left near-unintelligible notes and was probably incompetent in the use of ma... Read Chapter

Chapter 2

london

London She was just eighteen when London claimed her. The town itself was older, but to the naïve teenager arriving at ar... Read Chapter

Chapter 3

Eileen

Eileen A document in Marion’s box was one of the first written assignment her daughter did in college. It was clearly an... Read Chapter

Chapter 4

Journal

Journal During her first term in college, Eileen clearly had time on her hands. She saw a lot of the walls of her rented r... Read Chapter

Chapter 5

Sculptures

Sculptures Again, I presume this was an introductory exercise. It was handwritten on lined paper, and later folded and tap... Read Chapter

Chapter 6

Linda

Linda We shared photographs of the trio's life in Muswell Hill. The end of the nineteen-sixties was an era when photograph... Read Chapter

Chapter 7

Home

Home Rauschenberg did a goat through a tyre. Life stuffed through a dirty collar, death wrapped in rubber. Stuffed animal ... Read Chapter

Chapter 8

Marion

Marion Deep down, Eileen McHugh knew how similar she was to her mother, but in her youth, she refused to admit it. Indeed,... Read Chapter

Chapter 9

John

John John Daly has to be a crucial figure in this remaking of Eileen’s life and work. We have met him earlier in the sto... Read Chapter

Chapter 10

What's this>

What’s This? Eileen’s most viewed work was anonymous. It stayed in place for some years and probably caused a smile or... Read Chapter

Chapter 11

helen

Helen This was another assignment from Eileen’s first term in art college. It was submitted handwritten within the pages... Read Chapter

Chapter 12

Martin

Martin Martin Colbrooke was the first contact I made. He proved to be an invaluable source of information on Eileen’s family backgr... Read Chapter

Chapter 13

Imagine no more LSD

Imagine no more LSD This work was the first Eileen did during her second year at college. It was topical, even political, ... Read Chapter

Chapter 14

Swiss women vote

Swiss Women Vote! This was a piece from Eileen’s first year, imagined but never completed during the second term, probab... Read Chapter

Chapter 15

Jazz

Jazz I assemble bits. Bits and pieces. It’s what I do. Bits and pieces. Because when we step back and look at life, it�... Read Chapter

Chapter 16

Charlotte

Charlotte Eileen’s first visit to Pinner was much planned. Charlotte told her repeatedly not to worry, that her parents ... Read Chapter

Chapter 17

Time

Time We had all suddenly woken up to Caspar David Friedrich. I don’t know how it all started. We went to the exhibition ... Read Chapter

Chapter 18

Virus

Virus Eileen McHugh changed direction when she began Virus. Until then, she had always maintained that she wanted to create objects t... Read Chapter

Chapter 19