Chloe: The Vincent van Gogh Connection

The untold “female” history of Chloe, the nude artwork by French artist Jules Joseph Lefebvre, was the inspiration for my doctoral project, and a new novel-length work of historical fiction. This beautiful painting, which has hung at Young and Jackson Hotel in Melbourne for over a century, has been igniting the imagination of admirers ever…

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Cockatoo Dreaming: The Inspiration for Chloé

In his Timaeus and Theaetetus dialogues, Plato explores a conflation between dreaming and consciousness, and the notion that dreams may be a form of storytelling. It is easy to find examples of authors who have drawn inspiration from dreams, including Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the…

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