The grey space : notions of loss in writing real lives : critical thesis & The sculptress, a work of creative non-fiction

Abstract

This thesis in Creative and Critical Writing comprises two parts. The book, The Sculptress, is fictional interpretation of the life and work of the American artist and collector Mary Callery and her daughter, Caroline. It pivots around Callery’s fractured relationship with Caroline, suggesting the trajectory which led to the suicide of Caroline at the age of forty. It aims to throw new light on Callery’s considerable body of work, which has been overlooked by art history despite receiving critical acclaim. Set against fast-changing backdrop of European and American Modernism, it spans Callery’s lifetime, from her birth in 1903 to her death in Paris in 1977. The critical part of this thesis proposes that ‘loss’ is a central feature of writing creative non-fiction, and explores this with reference to the work of Naomi Wood and Julia Blackburn along with my own. Notions of loss emerged as the driving force behind my entire project: my own personal loss, loss of direction, loss of emotional, historical and factual truths. The ways in which Callery dealt with the ‘grey spaces’ in her own existence – that is to say, the distance between the two social poles she inhabited (avant-garde bohemia and old money, society New York), plus the grief she was unable to express about her daughter’s death – became the governing theme of the book.