Art
Osman Kan Eribakan
Portrait of Jessica Silverman and Sarah Thornton. Photo by Daniel Herbert. Courtesy of the couple.
Portrait of Michaela Yearwood-Dan and Elle Stanford. Courtesy of the couple.
Artists have always relied on love. Like water in the desert, a romantic relationship can be a source of inspiration and a way to explore oneself through a new pair of eyes. For queer artists, this bond between the artist and their loved ones has given rise to some of the most iconic works of art. sleep (1964), a five-hour video by Andy Warhol about his lover John Giorno, and a dreamy clip by Isaac Julien about the life and loves of Langston Hughes Finding Lanston (1991), queer artists have long viewed these connections as spaces for artistic experimentation.
Yet, queer love has been one of the most politicized and stigmatized forms of self-expression, still subject to intense scrutiny and even violence. In a spirit of resilience, many LGBTQ+ artists have incorporated their physical and emotional desires into the core of their work. From disarming portraits to silent sculptures, many works of art, both delightful and frustrating, are the product of queer artists’ relationships.
Artsy spoke with five queer couples about capturing the power of romantic love, the bonds that allow them to overcome challenges in the industry, and the inspiration they find in each other.
Portrait of Gray Vilebinski and Asa Seresin. Photo by Ruby Seresin. Courtesy of the couple.
When Gray Willebinski booked the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London as the venue for his wedding to his partner, Asa Seresin, he didn’t expect to receive another email from the institution’s curators soon after: an invitation to participate in his first institutional exhibition, “Red Sun High, Blue Sun Low.” The wedding ended up taking place at the venue to coincide with the exhibition, and the couple had their wedding photos taken in front of his multimedia artwork.
Willebinski and Seresin met three years ago on a dating app. That first date turned into a multi-day romance that caused Seresin, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania studying gender, particularly heterosexuality, to postpone her flight twice. The moment was pivotal for Willebinski, who had just turned 30, had breast surgery and was having his first solo gallery show at Hales Gallery in London. “We fell in love very quickly,” Willebinski recalls.
The pair’s love and professional lives began to overlap early on, when Seresin wrote an essay for the group show “Motherboy,” which Willebinski is organizing with curator Stella Botet at Milan’s gallery Gió Marconi in 2023. They explain that despite their different practices—Wilebinski focuses on representations of masculinity in his multimedia artworks, while Seresin examines our complex relationship with desire—their ideas often converge around language. “Our shared interest in self-expression helps me solidify my vision and helps me translate my concerns into a language,” says Willebinski. “I really appreciate that we both have a childlike love for an idea, and maybe a little obsession.”
Portrait of Michaela Yearwood-Dan and Al Stanford. Photo courtesy of the couple
The pandemic was the starting point for the relationship between London-based painter and sculptor Michala Yearwood-Dan and Elle Stanford. The couple first chatted on an app in December 2019, two months after Stanford, who was the culture editor of The New York Times, met her. New York Timesmoved from New York to London. The following month, their first face-to-face meeting quickly turned into a meeting zigzagging through London’s empty streets.
“We immediately bore witness to each other’s most vulnerable moments and rawest feelings, which allowed our relationship to progress much faster than it normally would,” Stanford says. A journalist who studied art history “virtually” in college, she was immediately impressed by Yearwood-Dan’s studio practice. When they met, the painter had just had her first solo gallery show at Tiwani Contemporary, the first time she was able to make a living from her mesmerizing, twisted botanical paintings. “Seeing works in progress together and visiting museums opened my eyes to the layers of creative abstraction,” Stanford says of her partner’s work.
For Yearwood-Dan, the relationship has supported a formative period in her career. In October 2020, Marianne Boesky Gallery reached out to the painter on Instagram, expressing interest in a Zoom studio visit, leading to a small showing in the Chelsea gallery’s Project Room in 2021. A larger exhibition in the main space followed in 2023. “I’m lucky to be able to develop my practice in a loving place where late night studio times and sometimes prioritizing our careers are understandable,” Yearwood-Dan adds, who credits their relationship for making her “more energized about what needs to be accomplished.”
Portrait of Anthony Cudahy and Ian Lewandowski. Photo by Benoît Porcher. Courtesy of the couple.
Anthony Cudahy and Ian Lewandowski first met 11 years ago, in a move typical of the New York art world in the 2010s: They collaborated on a zine. Cudahy invited Lewandowski to publish his photos in the biweekly publication where he worked, and the two began dating and eventually married, with a dog. The painter and photographer now work in adjacent studios, steps from their Brooklyn apartment. “We’ve always worked in a similar way, not only in space but also in subject matter,” says Lewandowski, whose photographic portraits—depicting queer elders, friends, or himself—are currently on view in solo shows “Reflectors” at No Place in Columbus, Ohio, and “Once, Once Again” at the Aurora Center for Photography in Indianapolis.
Both artists capture forms of queer intimacy with ambiguous emotional themes, and they appear in each other’s work, sometimes even looking identical. Cudahy’s melancholic paintings depict distorted interiors in hazy tones, with figures—both anonymous and signed—inhabiting these malleable spaces. Following last year’s joint exhibition of Cudahy at the two galleries’ London spaces, the artist will have solo shows at Hales and GRIMM in New York this fall.
Ten years ago, the couple embarked on the unpredictable journey of being queer artists together, which was a challenge. “We didn’t know what our careers would look like,” Lewandowski said. “When you have no foundation for the future, it’s inspiring to have another person who has been through a similar phase and is madly hungry for the same thing.”
Portrait of Hilary Harkness and Alla Tucker. Photo by Alla Tucker. Image courtesy of the couple
Painter Hilary Harkness and writer Ara Tucker started dating on April Fools’ Day in 2013, but it wasn’t long before their relationship became serious. The two met over their shared love of racquet sports, and since then, they have intertwined not only their love lives, but their work lives as well. For example, Harkness created the cover art for Tucker’s 2022 collection of surrealist comedic short stories, How to cultivate art starsInstead, Harkness also incorporates Tucker’s image (who has appeared in war scenes or as a model for Josephine Baker) into her paintings, provocatively rewriting the stories of historically abused female characters. Initiative and curiosity are among the ambitions effortlessly determined by her heroines. Warriors, nobles, rebels and sensual creatures, they take their true place in the stories of yesteryear as portrayed in Harkness’s brisk gestures.
In 2018, Harkness decided to create a new version of Winslow Homer’s 1866 work after returning home from his first day working on the Met’s reproduction project. Prisoners of war from the frontbut painted the soldiers black. This became the “Arabella Freeman” series, named after the fictional free black woman from history, and is on view in Harkness’s recent solo exhibition at PPOW, “Front Line Prisoners,” her first in a decade.
Tucker occasionally takes over the painter’s Instagram account, and Harkness takes objects (like skulls) from her partner’s writing studio to make her paintings, and the couple has fostered an organic form of creative exchange. “As a gay couple, we try to demystify things and allow other people to work with us, rather than shut the door behind us,” Tucker said.
Sarah Thornton and Jessica Silverman pose with their family. Photo by Daniel Hebert. Provided by the couple.
Art fairs are hardly the best place to fall in love at first sight. Yet at the 2011 Frieze Art Fair in London, art dealer Jessica Silverman and critic Sarah Thornton were rewarded with a slew of rave reviews. Silverman’s booth, which featured a solo show by queer German artist Susanna M. Winterling, was “one of only two good booths at the fair,” Thornton said. Their tastes had always coincided: After the critic wandered into a mixed-media installation, she realized that the then-emerging Jessica Silverman Gallery also represented Tammy Rae Karan, whose photographic series “Lesbian Beds” was one of the highlights of her Istanbul Biennial that year.
Thirteen years later, the couple lives in San Francisco, where Silverman has grown her eponymous business into a Bay Area giant. Thornton published a book in 2008, Seven Days in the Art World is a classic in the contemporary art market and recently released her latest work. Breasts Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us About BreastsThe book also documents Silverman’s journey to breastfeed their baby, Echo. “Watching Jessica give birth and breastfeed was a big influence on the structure of the book,” Thornton said. Silkscreen prints from Roy Hollowell’s (Silverman’s representative) “Milk Fountain” series, which depict an abstract hallucination of a fountain of white liquid overflowing, serve as illustrations for this chapter.
While the two seem worlds apart, the influential critic and trendsetting dealer offer each other new perspectives. “I’m a listener—I hear everything, but now I understand more about how artists live and sell,” Thornton explains. When Silverman signed Judy Chicago to the gallery a few years ago, Thornton was her biggest supporter. “Jessica is more adventurous than most dealers,” she adds. “We are feminists, and diversity is a driver of the show.”
Ten years on from that first Frieze meeting, the couple’s tastes have become harmonious. “We agreed very quickly on the best paintings for the room,” Thornton says. “Jessica’s eye is more adventurous than my conservative viewpoint—I need to see the next batch of works.”
