Tracey Emin says she’s “a much better artist” and “a much better human being” after having cancer.
“I’m more alive than I’ve ever been,” she told an audience at the Hay Festival on Thursday night.
Emin was diagnosed with an aggressive type of bladder cancer in 2020 and underwent major surgery.
She added that giving up alcohol three years ago had also helped improve her work: “I’ve got so much more time because I’m not drinking.”
The maverick creative said she was worried her art “wouldn’t be wild enough” after giving up drinking “but it’s more wild, more free, [has] more energy”-.
Considered one of Britain’s greatest living artists, Emin suggested she had been enjoying a creative purple patch since her recovery.
“It’s like I’ve come out of this dark shadow that’s been following me all my life.
“My work has taken on this whole new life, this freedom. I’m painting all the time.”
She added: “I messed up a lot of my life earlier and did loads of really stupid things. Luckily I realize that I’ve got this other chance, it’s almost like someone’s said, ‘She’s not that bad, give her another chance!’ And I’m making the most of it.”
Asked by an audience member if she had any advice to offer her younger self and to any young women starting in a creative field today, Emin quipped: “Smoking is the biggest regret of my whole life… and thinking about all the things I’ve done in my life, that’s embarrassing!”
And in true Emin style, she also gave one suggestion that is unrepeatable, delighting the audience, who later gave her a standing ovation.
Last year, Emin returned with a show in Edinburgh and she’s since opened an art school in her hometown of Margate, which also has a kitchen to train local people in hospitality and provides artists with fair rent studio space.
“It’s like a whole little creative universe in Margate,” she explained.
“In London, you can’t just say ‘I’m going to open an art school’ but in Margate, you can, if you have the money. The whole community is thriving and helping each other.
“We are living in weird, destitute, dystopian times, it’s getting worse and worse and worse… everybody needs to be pulled up and if you can help someone right now, you need to help them. And I don’t mean it in a socialist-type way or a political way. It’s human kindness.”
She also said she worried about the future of art in the school curriculum, which is currently compulsory until the age of 14.
“Art’s always saved me. My mother always said: ‘If Tracey didn’t have art, she’d be dead by now.’
“I wasn’t considered to be academic but I was bright in an artistic, visual way.
“I’d like the government to know there is not a car, there’s not a fork, there’s not a knife that doesn’t come with some kind of design or some kind of art.”
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