Only Artists

The painter Chantal Joffe meets the writer Olivia Laing. Chantal Joffe was Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy of Arts until 2019, and is renowned for her bold, large-scale portraits of women, and for her self-portraits. She has won the Charles Wollaston Award for the 'most distinguished work' in the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, chosen from more than 1300 entries. In 2018 she set herself the challenge of creating a self-portrait every day. Olivia Laing's books include The Lonely City, a reflection on what it means to be alone, which has been translated into 17 languages and sold over 100,000 copies, and The Trip to Echo Spring, which focuses on the connections between creativity and alcohol. Her novel Crudo, set in the summer of 2017, was widely acclaimed and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2019. Producer: Clare Walker