„The moths seemed to like landing on the two photographs I had stuck on to the fridge door with magnets. One was of the British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, age sixty, a carving tool in her hand, leaning into the giant sphere of wood she was shaping. She had burst solid form open to make a pierced form, a hole, after the birth of her first child in 1931. Hepworth described sculpture as ‘the three-dimensional realization of an idea’.

The other photograph was of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois, age ninety, an iron carving tool in her hand, leaning over a white sculptural sphere that came to her waist. In the photograph she was wearing a chiffon blouse under a black tunic, her silver hair pulled into a bun, small gold hoops in her ears. Bourgeois had unfashionably declared that she made art because her emotions were bigger than herself.“

© 2018 Deborah Levy, The cost of living.