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.
“This ground-breaking book examines concepts of shame and complicity and obsession and so it is, by turns, disturbing, heart-breaking, and infuriating. But most of all it is relentlessly honest and beautifully written.”—Caroline Woodward, author of Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper and other titles
“Nuanced and poetic, The Art of Looking Back details the evolving understanding of a mature woman looking at the tapestry of feelings and experiences from her younger years, especially triggered by memories of a well-known older man’s obsessive enchantment with her as a flowering young woman through to her middle years.
Filled with rich reminiscences from earlier years and critical questions posed as an older woman, Theresa Kishkan’s poetic and vibrant writing grapples with youth’s evolving self-image, the reactions and decisions creating life’s trail, and the questions and insight that age can bestow.”—Christina Johnson-Dean, writer, teacher, and art historian
