Curiosity drew him to a studio in Kent Street, a grimy industrial site with tanneries and wool stores as its neighbours. And in a white-walled loft on the fourth floor he discovered the former Marxist confidently in control of a production which would eventually feature in the pages of Vogue magazine.
Two months before, in Melbourne, she had long auburn hair and a tiny waist, with peasant-like skirts that flared and flounced when she walked. She had very long legs, and though she often wore slippers in her studio she never ventured out into the street in anything but high heels. Now, in Sydney, her hair was cropped short in the manner of someone who had been caught in flagrante with the enemy, which, from her political point of view, was not inappropriate. The skirts were gone, replaced by pants and a long, soft shirt whose colours were the sole reminder of her previous life, for they were all - right down to the single small black button at the neck - in the palette of her paintings.
This transmutation stirred Chubb excessively. At first it seems paradoxical that a man who put such weight on the truth should be so excited by a woman who cared so little about it. But Chubb was mired in his own history, and it is not difficult to imagine how attractive it must have been to see someone shed her past like an old skin.
Excerpt from My Life as a fake by Peter Carey.
Painting: Archive life painting.
View more painting on my website Melanie McDonald
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