Artists have always depended on love. Like water in an unforgiving desert, romantic relationships can be a bountiful source of inspiration, and an exploration of one’s own self through a new pair of eyes. For queer artists, this bond between an artist and their beloved has yielded some of the most definitive works of art. From Sleep (1964), Andy Warhol’s five-hour-long video of his lover John Giorno, to Isaac Julien’s dreamy sequences of Langston Hughes’s life and loves in Looking for Langston (1991), queer artists have long seen these connections as a space for artistic experimentation.
And yet, queer love has been among the most politicized and stigmatized forms of self-expression, and is still highly scrutinized, or even met with violence. Many LGBTQ+ artists, in a spirit of resilience, have brought their physical and emotional yearnings into the core of their practices. From disarming portraits to silently penetrating sculptures, many works of art, both joyous and devastating, have resulted from queer artists’ relationships.
Artsy spoke to five queer couples about the power of capturing their romance, the ties that hold them together against the challenges of the industry, and the inspiration they find in each other.
Hilary Harkness and Ara Tucker
Painter Hilary Harkness and writer Ara Tucker began their relationship on April Fools’ Day in 2013, but their bond became serious soon after. Brought together by a mutual love of racquet sports, they have since been intertwined in each other’s work lives, as much as their romantic lives. For example, Harkness created the cover art for Tucker’s 2022 book of surreal comical short stories, How to Raise an Art Star. Conversely, Harkness has also integrated the figure of Tucker—who has been shown in battle scenes or as a model for Josephine Baker—into her paintings that rewrite stories of mistreated historical female figures with a titillating edge. Agency and curiosity inhabit her heroines’ effortlessly determined ambitions. Warriors, aristocrats, rebellions, and sexual beings, they claim their real estates in tales of yore, painted in Harkness’s brisk gestures.
When Harkness came back home from her first day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Copyist Program in 2018, she decided to make a new version of Winslow Homer’s 1866 Prisoners from the Front, but paint the soldiers as Black. This became the “Arabella Freeman” series, named after a historical, fictional free Black woman, shown in Harkness’s recent solo exhibition “Prisoners from the Front” at P•P•O•W, her first in a decade.
Between Tucker occasionally taking over the painter’s Instagram account and Harkness snatching objects—such as a skull—from her partner’s writing studio to implement into her paintings, the couple has cultivated an organic form of creative exchange. “As a queer couple, we are trying to demystify things and bring others along with us instead of slamming any doors behind us,” said Tucker.