{"id":351469,"date":"2025-08-17T11:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T11:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351469\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T11:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T11:11:10","slug":"your-work-changed-the-course-of-my-entire-life-novelist-douglas-stuart-meets-painter-jenny-saville-jenny-saville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351469\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Your work changed the course of my entire life\u2019: novelist Douglas Stuart meets painter Jenny Saville | Jenny Saville"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1992, I was a 16-year-old who was watching his mother drink herself to death. I had a desperate need to find work and somewhere to stay, and so remaining in education didn\u2019t seem like a possibility. I had two teachers who saw how I was struggling. They dreamed a future for me that I could never have imagined for myself. One evening they took me up to the degree show at the Glasgow School of Art, and there I came face to face with the paintings of Jenny Saville<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The power of that encounter has never left me. Those images were fierce and confrontational. A few months after the degree show, I lost my mother to her addiction. With the support of my teachers, I eventually finished school and went on to art school and built a career in design. Meanwhile, the GSA degree show formed a body of work that would lead to Jenny\u2019s ascension into the Young British Artist movement \u2013 with her works appearing on the covers of Manic Street Preachers\u2019 albums The Holy Bible and Journal for Plague Lovers \u2013 and help cement her reputation as one of the greatest British painters of any generation.<\/p>\n

Jenny Saville\u2019s Compass, 2013. Photograph: Mike Bruce\/\u00a9 Jenny Saville. Courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n

I have often returned to Jenny\u2019s paintings as inspiration for my writing, especially when thinking about the body, the clarity of a child\u2019s gaze, a mother\u2019s vulnerability. Writing is my way of painting. I try to conjure pictures in the minds of my readers and surround them with a world that feels as vivid as any visual work. Jenny\u2019s paintings contain many narratives; that of the image, loaded with emotion, tenderness, brutality, movement. But they also contain the narrative of their own making. You can read the journey a painter takes, following her decisions through every brushstroke. It is not unlike the sketching and building and drafting of a novel.<\/p>\n

On the occasion of Jenny\u2019s crowning retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery in London, I wanted to revisit what her paintings have meant to me. So, 33 years after that fateful summer in Glasgow, we spent the afternoon together in her studio in Oxford and finally had the chance to talk.<\/p>\n

Douglas Stuart<\/strong> Looking back now, what do you think your 22-year-old self would think about this show at the National Portrait Gallery?<\/p>\n

Jenny Saville<\/strong> Well, it\u2019s exciting. My 20s were an incredible time. Before that, I had waitressing jobs alongside being at art school. But during the summer between my third and fourth year, I worked to put enough money in the bank so that I wouldn\u2019t have to. And I learned a lesson about time: that it was the most precious aspect of life. It was wonderful to be able to paint every day: everything came together, and my degree show had my first mature pictures.<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> Did you always know that you wanted to work in paint?<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> I always painted or made things from a young age. The permission for creativity was strong in my upbringing. My parents were teachers and would encourage creativity.<\/p>\n

Jenny Saville\u2019s Propped, 1992. Photograph: \u00a9 Jenny Saville. Courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> In a lot of ways, you were the one who gave me my first creative awakening. Growing up in Glasgow, I\u2019d never been to a museum or a gallery. A couple of art teachers at school could see I was struggling. One night after school, they said: \u201cLook, just come with us,\u201d and took me up to the Glasgow School of Art to the 1992 degree show. A lot of it was lost on me, because I was only a kid. But then I turned the corner and there was Propped, and although I didn\u2019t understand all the layers of it, I was blown away. In that one moment, your work changed the course of my entire life.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> Was that the first time you went to the building?<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> First time. I grew up less than a mile away from it and hardly knew it existed. Even if I had, I would have been intimidated; working-class kids don\u2019t always feel that they\u2019re invited into those circles.<\/p>\n

When I was writing [Douglas\u2019s 2020 debut novel] Shuggie Bain<\/a>, I looked at Trace (1993\u201394) a lot. It was an image that I had of Shuggie when he takes off his mother\u2019s bra to care for her because she can\u2019t care for herself, and he\u2019s looking at her back, at the lines left in the flesh, and rubbing them and hoping they would lift. As if he could erase them, he could take away some of her pain.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> Hilary Robinson, my theory tutor for my dissertation, had written an essay where she said: \u201cA body is not a neutral ground of meaning but a copper plate to be etched.\u201d<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> Those paintings were helpful in slowing me down. They ask us to observe closely. They challenged me to write about bodies in a similar way, and it\u2019s essential because the body is a very political thing. It\u2019s often the only thing that my characters have: their bodies are shaped by what they do, and their lives are shaped by how they use their bodies to survive.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> There\u2019s a lot of attention concentrated on our bodies. You see that shift in the high street, the way the shops change over the years: you used to have a post office, a stationer\u2019s, a butcher; now many have transitioned to nail bars, tanning salons, tattoo parlours.<\/p>\n

The art of us \u2026 Jenny Saville and Douglas Stuart. Photograph: Courtesy of Gagosian<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> I was at a university a couple of weeks ago to do a reading of Shuggie Bain. It\u2019s only five years old but I can\u2019t yet look back on him with fondness. All I wanted to do was rewrite the book. I wished I had a red pen. Do you look back with kindness? With fondness?<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> Fondness sometimes, or I find my fearless naivety a bit amusing. Often I hear the music that was playing at the time, look at passages of paint and remember making that mark, the size of brush I used, the feeling inside. When I see my paintings I often think: \u201cOh, that part worked, but maybe I should have put another bridging tone there.\u201d People say: \u201cOh, that\u2019s a great painting,\u201d and you think: \u201cIt\u2019s not as good as it was in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> It\u2019s similar with writing: your audience encounters the finished artefact and they don\u2019t see the journey and the loneliness.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> I wouldn\u2019t call it loneliness. I enjoy making paintings.<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> I find writing very lonely because I worked for 20 years in fashion. Now, writing in contrast to fashion feels incredibly lonely because I sit around and talk to imaginary people all day.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> Do you have a routine?<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> I find that imaginary people are chattiest in the mornings, so I try to get up at six o\u2019clock and I work till two or three in the afternoon. How about you?<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> I\u2019ve had different working rhythms and routines in my life. Recently I\u2019ve been getting up about 6.30 in the morning and then I\u2019ll paint until I feel that lull, which tends to be around four, and then I might do another session. I like painting eyes first thing in the morning.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/p>\n

The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Jenny Saville\u2019s Ruben\u2019s Flap, 1998-1999. Photograph: \u00a9 Jenny Saville. Courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> Why is that?<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> Because my concentration\u2019s at its highest, so I tend to paint details like teeth and eyes first thing in the morning, when I\u2019m sharp.<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> One of the things that speaks to me the most about your work is your journey with colour. It has evolved so much. In the early work I can actually feel Glasgow in the paintings.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> Glasgow can have beautiful light. My first home there was on Hill Street, and you\u2019d look over toward the flats and mountains and see this silvery light. I\u2019ve never seen it anywhere else quite the same way. Over the last few years I\u2019ve thought much more about nature and light. I\u2019d travel, look at other approaches to painting. I went to Paris and New York and saw how [Willem] de Kooning painted flesh and thought: \u201cWhat great colours and fluidity.\u201d Then after 11 September and the Iraq war, we were flooded with images that had a lot of intense colour and emotion and I responded to the atmosphere of that time. My work evolved and I started using ranges of red and blue pigments, for example, like in my Stare heads. If you\u2019re curious you experiment, and on that journey you discover possibilities.<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> The same in writing. You\u2019ve got to write through it, to free yourself of it, and then get to the thing that you\u2019ve got no idea that you were heading toward. You\u2019re feeling a character and you\u2019re not quite sure what they\u2019re going to do, so you build this world for them and then you see how they react.<\/p>\n

Jenny Saville\u2019s Chasah, 2020. Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd\/\u00a9 Jenny Saville. Courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> It\u2019s been said before, but it\u2019s probably impossible to make the perfect work. I often think: \u201cThat\u2019s almost what I meant, that\u2019s got something.\u201d And this moves you forward to the next painting.<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> Truth is essential in writing. And there\u2019s power in writing truths that people would rather leave unsaid \u2013 maybe like depicting a body that some might rather not see? I must admit, I was horrified looking back at the journalism around some of your earlier work, and the fact that reviewers would use the word \u201cgrotesque\u201d to describe it. Obviously those works haven\u2019t changed, but the world around us keeps shifting, so hopefully reactions have changed as well. Has that journey been interesting to you, or do you not pay attention to it?<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> I just get on with my work. You can\u2019t predict how work will be perceived. And you evolve as well. In the early 90s there were fewer spaces to show, and only a small minority of artists got major platforms. Now art is exhibited from all over the world and different voices are being heard. And then once you\u2019ve been accepted, it\u2019s like, you\u2019ve won the Booker prize, you can\u2019t stay annoyed about that.<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> I felt really overwhelmed by the feeling of being on the outside and nobody knowing me. And then suddenly everybody looked at me like: \u201cWhere the hell did you just come from?\u201d There was 15 years of work behind my novels so I hadn\u2019t just arrived, I\u2019d just been quietly over there where no one was paying attention to me. I miss that.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> It\u2019s important to have time to develop, be playful, use your imagination. I\u2019m often judged on those early degree show works and I\u2019ve developed my painting a lot since then. You have to make the work the way it should be. You can\u2019t make work to appease people who have written a bad review. And if you\u2019re mature about it, the bad review of a new body of work is OK.<\/p>\n

Jenny Saville\u2019s Aleppo, 2017-18. Photograph: Lucy Dawkins\/\u00a9 Jenny Saville. Courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> That\u2019s very big of you. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m quite there yet. That\u2019s why the world is so nostalgic for the 90s: a time before the internet, for that sense of being by ourselves inside our own lives, without constant commentary and feedback.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fascinated by what Cy Twombly told you once about working: about trying to be ignored for as long as you can in your career, which is so smart.<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> By the time he\u2019d told me that, everybody wanted to know Cy, to show his work and talk to him. And your impulse is to look at that with admiration, but I could see there was a kind of suffering in his words, because you need to concentrate, you need time to play, and that\u2019s probably why he worked in isolated places, so he could focus. You can\u2019t have judgment when you play. You want to be like that child sitting on the floor making a painting when nobody cares: that\u2019s the most precious thing because it\u2019s a space without judgment, and you need to feel that.<\/p>\n

DS<\/strong> You\u2019ve got to retreat from the world. But was your early success overwhelming at 22, or did it just feel like permission?<\/p>\n

JS<\/strong> Many opportunities happened in a short space of time. I was fortunate to sell my degree show, which was the first time I had enough money to work for a prolonged period. I had this run of wonderful things happen. And as I moved forward I just said to myself: \u201cGet this work right, make this work the best you can.\u201d I stayed quiet and concentrated. And that\u2019s the lesson I learned: that the prize is the journey. Working and enjoying life\u2019s opportunities with family and friends is the prize.<\/p>\n

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting<\/a> is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, to 7 September, then tours the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth Texas, from 12 October – 18 January 2026. Douglas Stuart\u2019s next novel, John of John, will be published by Picador on 26 May 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the summer of 1992, I was a 16-year-old who was watching his mother drink herself to death.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-351469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115043807827256322","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}