Happy book birthday THE AGE OF CREATIVITY by Emily Urquhart, which is out today from Walrus Books!
A moving portrait of a father and daughter relationship and a case for late-stage creativity from Emily Urquhart, the bestselling author of Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes.
“This is a gift of a book, an ode to late style, a daughter’s devotional, a fascinating dive into art history, but above all a radical detonation of accepted notions of ageing and art. Emily Urquhart is a curious and frank guide, who captures her subject with clear and perfect brushstrokes.” — Kyo Maclear, award-winning and bestselling author of Birds Art Life
“Wise and thoughtful, Emily Urquhart’s The Age of Creativity leads us through the landscape of imagination. The bonds of familial love, the workings of memory, the drive to create, and the process of aging are all explored with Urquhart’s trademark blending of intelligence and warmth. This important work delves into the life of an artist who surveys the transformation of his work over decades and the parallel trajectory of his life. Urquhart’s beautifully crafted memoir celebrates the longevity and the universality of the creative spirit alive in us all.” — Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender: The Call of the American West
It has long been thought that artistic output declines in old age. When Emily Urquhart and her family celebrated the eightieth birthday of her father, the illustrious painter Tony Urquhart, she found it remarkable that, although his pace had slowed, he was continuing his daily art practice of drawing, painting, and constructing large-scale sculptures, and was even innovating his style. Was he defying the odds, or is it possible that some assumptions about the elderly are flat-out wrong? After all, many well-known visual artists completed their best work in the last decade of their lives, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne among them. With the eye of a memoirist and the curiosity of a journalist, Urquhart began an investigation into late-stage creativity, asking: Is it possible that our best work is ahead of us? Is there an expiry date on creativity? Do we ever really know when we’ve done anything for the last time?
Emily Urquhart is a National Magazine Award–winning writer and has a doctorate in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her first book, Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes, was a Maclean’s bestseller, a finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2015. Her freelance writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, The Walrus Magazine, Longreads, the Rumpus, and Eighteen Bridges, among other publications. She is a nonfiction editor for the New Quarterly and teaches creative nonfiction at Wilfrid Laurier University. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband and their two children. Emily is represented by Samantha Haywood.