‘Regrets? Number one: smoking. Number two: taking it up the wrong hole’: Tracey Emin on reputation, radical honesty – and Reform | Tracey Emin | The Guardian

Harry tells me that when they are in the studio together, “she talks about what she sees in the canvas, and then starts painting it in”.

I ask her if she can describe what that feels like. “There’s the canvas, there’s me, and there’s this other space between us, and you have to go through it, that space, and you drag in everything behind you with you into it. It’s like going through a weird tunnel. And the painting is whatever you’ve dragged through the tunnel with you,” she says. “There are many ways to be a painter – art has many rooms. But for me it’s like an explosion of sorts. It’s like my heart being ripped open and then throwing it all on to the canvas.”
— Read on www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/feb/14/tracey-emin-interview-tate-modern-regrets-smoking