For the artists and writers in this book - Claude Monet, Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Karen Blixen, Ernest Hemingway, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso and Emily Kame Kngwarreye - the act of recreating Eden was a life-changing, art-making, healing rite that becomes both a map of their careers and an index of their subject matter. What unites these artists and writers is a journey of return, of rediscovery, that leads them to the creation of a personal paradise. Upon arriving at that place, whether it was Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico, Monet in Giverny or Picasso in Provence, iconic new work emerged, inspired by that terrain, from its light, its colours, its landscape. Each of these artists had recovered the place they'd been unconsciously seeking for years. In this engaging and ground-breaking book, Janine Burke explores how art and landscape, love and companionship, home and garden are entwined. Nature is culture, and its most insistent inspiration.

About the Author

Janine Burke's novel Second Sight won the Victorian Premier's Award for fiction. Company of Images was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year award and the Miles Franklin Award. She has written a groundbreaking series of books on the Heide circle, including Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker, which was shortlisted for the 2002 Queensland Premier's Literary Award. The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection, shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier's award for non-fiction, is the acclaimed survey of Freud's personal collection.