TY  - BOOK
AU  - Preston,Edwina
TI  - Bad art mother
SN  - 9781743059012 (paperback)
U1  - A823.4 23
PY  - 2022///
CY  - Mile End, South Australia
PB  - Wakefield Press
KW  - Family life fiction
KW  - thema
KW  - Feminists
KW  - Fiction
KW  - Australian fiction
KW  - Women
KW  - Women artists
KW  - Motherhood
KW  - Mother and child
KW  - Melbourne (Vic.)
KW  - Australian
N2  - Good mothers are expected to be selfless. Artists are seen as selfish. So what does this mean for a mother with artistic ambitions? Enter: frustrated poet Veda Gray, who is offered a Faustian bargain when a wealthy childless couple, the Parishes, invite her to exchange her young son Owen for time to write. Veda's story unfolds as an adult Owen reflects on his boyhood in the Melbourne suburbs, and in the vibrant bohemian inner-city art world where his restaurateur father was a king. Meanwhile, the talented women in his orbit - Veda, Mrs Parish, wife of an influential poet, muralist and restaurant worker Rosa - push against gender expectations to be recognised as legitimate artists, by their intimates and the wider world. And almost-aunt Ornella, who declares herself without an artistic bone in her body, is perhaps the closest thing Owen has to a traditional mother. As Owen is encouraged to 'be a man', he loses something of himself, too
ER  -