(born in London 1963)
These Feelings Were True, 2020, titled, signed, dated Tracey Emin 2020, 8 color lithographs on Somerset paper, no. 22 from the edition of 50 examples, 55.5 x 45.5 cm (3) and 65.6 x 55.5 cm (5), framed (8)

Provenance:
Counter Edition, London
European Private Collection

Tracey Emin, alongside Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Marc Quinn, was part of the Young British Artists. The Young British Artists were not an official collective, rather it was a name given to a group of artists based in east London in the 1990s. Young British Art was the birth of a whole new, unconventional gallery scene that took up residence in formerly vacant factory buildings.

In 1993, Tracey Emin opened the "Shop" together with Sarah Lucas. The "Shop" was a six-month project based on Bethnal Green Road that marked the beginning of her career and was also one of her first autobiographical works. Tracey Emin describes her work as ‘living autobiography’ and she makes use of a wide-range of media - drawings, sculptures, installations, films, and books explore painful and provocative chapters of her life. She cites painters Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele as sources of inspiration for her expressionist style. The narratives within her work are personal. She analyses her experiences with sexual abuse, her search for female identity, and her desire to free herself from her own constraints. Her work is honest, candid and confrontational.

Although Tracey Emin uses various mediums, drawing and prints remain central to her practice. The lithographic series These Feelings Were True features eight self-portraits by Emin that represent an extraordinary and intimate exploration of the self. They feel like a personal sketchbook of self-portraits, something like a visual diary. Her works have a dynamic energy that is powerfully elevated by gestural work. Working freely and assertively, Emin makes bold statements about sex, violence, love, and death. Yet her inner world remains the subject of her works as she honestly reveals aspects of her everyday life and tragic memories from her life.

In 1999 Tracey Emin was nominated for the Turner Prize, the prestigious British art award. Four years later she was awarded the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 2011-13, she was professor of drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts. This made her the second female professor at the Royal Academy since its founding in 1768, after Fiona Rae.