Art of Looking Back
Regular price
€29.99
A01=Theresa Kishkan
art history
artistic gaze
Author_Theresa Kishkan
British Columbia
Canadian painting
Category=DNC
consent
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
forthcoming
Jack Wilkinson
male gaze
memoir
muse
nostalgia
painting
personal narrative
reclaiming the gaze
The Limners
The Society of Limners
Theresa Kishkan
Product details
- ISBN 9781997702061
- Dimensions: 135 x 183mm
- Publication Date: 29 May 2026
- Publisher: Thornapple Press
- Publication City/Country: CA
- Product Form: Hardback
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At 23, Theresa Kishkan met an artist who became obsessed with her. She was young, she was flattered, and the situation quickly overwhelmed her. He drew and painted her for a few months, after which she went away for a year. When she returned, she was determined not to resume the relationship. But the artist made contact with her after the birth of her first child and became a family friend, bringing gifts of paintings. Those images hung in Theresa's home, and one in particular reminded her almost daily of her younger self, in ways both positive and not so much. She avoided looking too closely at his images of her and at his long, passionate and often troubling letters. Decades later, while sorting old correspondence, she was taken back to those early days and began, at last, to write about her relationship with the now-deceased artist. The Art of Looking Back is a meditation on the male gaze, on reclaiming one's younger self, and on agency: how we lose it, how we find it again. This poetic memoir asks questions about older men and younger women and girls, and the persistence of that dynamic in art.
Theresa Kishkan lives on the Sechelt Peninsula, BC with her husband, poet John Pass. She has published 16 books, several of which have been nominated for awards, including the Hubert Evans Award and the Ethel Wilson Prize. Theresa’s essay collection Phantom Limb received the inaugural Readers’ Choice Award from the Creative Nonfiction Collective in 2008.
