Summary
Stella Vine's art gallery is tucked down Whitecross Street, not far from Shoreditch in London. At first it seems like any other grey, anonymous street but the further down you go, the more it feels like a gateway to another world. It meanders past the higgledy- piggledy market, stalls piled with cheap shoes and sprawls of books, the steady thump of reggae music competing with the clank of metal as tarpaulins are assembled; down past the Thai food van where the steam shoots from fried vegetables. At the bottom, near a parked red van, in an old butcher's shop, is the tiny whitewashed gallery where bailiffs called just weeks ago, looking for Vine. But that was before she sold her controversial picture of Princess Diana to London's most famous art patron, Charles Saatchi.
Stella Vine, artist and former stripper, loves this street. Somehow it suits her; the colour of it, the cosmopolitan chaos. Two flights up a narrow winding staircase, above the gallery, is the room where she lives. "It's a tip," she says cheerfully, but as the door swings open it is fascinating, like being placed slap bang in the middle of a person's entire life. The whitewashed walls have been used as a makeshift diary, "Tuesday 4pm" written above the bed in black ink. The large bed with hastily thrown-up cover and huge pink cushions dominates, but there are suitcases piled on the floor, and boxes and papers and CDs and a crammed clothes rail. Canvases are propped against chairs and art materials scattered on the table below the window. The room is stuffed with enough accoutrements for three lives, which, in just 35 years, is roughly what Vine has lived already.See the full content of this document
Extract
Stripped Bare
The stiff, old-fashioned casement window is open just inches. The night Vine painted her now infamous Diana painting, the air was thick with the smell of turps, linseed oil and paint. "There's not much ventilation. You just get a bit high, really," she explains. "It's probably a bit dangerous."
The result is a highly emotive image of an almost crazed Diana, bold red lipstick seeping from her lips like smeared blood. With her gaudy make-up and tiara, she is almost like a child playing princesses. And at the side of the painting, "Hi Paul can you come over I'm really frightened" is scrawled in childish writing.It wasn't j...See the full content of this document
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