COME over and have a chat, I’m bored shitless,” says artist Laszlo Lukacs.
He’s marooned behind the reception at Moore’s gallery during a post-lunch lull, a tuft of grey chest hair peeking out of his casual sweater.
It’s a far cry from the ritzy life he’d enjoyed in London, clinking glasses with Salman Rushdie (and bodyguards), Martin Amis, the Versaces and countless other members of London’s beau monde.
Lukacs is the ex-husband of Frieda Hughes, the daughter of British poet laureate Ted Hughes and American-born poet Sylvia Plath.
The artist and Frieda divorced in 2010 following a 14-year marriage, which had included a lengthy spell living in London.
He has channeled his memories of the Hughes family into a series of paintings entitled Family Album, part of his latest exhibition For the Record 2013.
The exhibition features the only two portraits of Frieda in existence.
Frieda I shows the ex in a country idyll, reposing against a tree trunk in red stockings.
Frieda II depicts her gloomier side: sitting beside an owl in a melancholic trance.
“These painting were very cathartic,” Lukacs says.
“The split with Frieda was fairly acrimonious and ended up involving lawyers.
“She suffered from depression, which made things difficult, and in the end the communication between us just disintegrated.”
Tragedy and mental illness has stalked the Hughes-Plath clan since the early 1960s.
Sylvia Plath ended her own life in London in 1963, gassing herself in her kitchen oven, less than a year after separating from husband Ted.
Six years later Hughes’ partner Assia Wevill killed herself and her four-year-old daughter Shura the same way.
Hughes’ and Plath’s son Nicholas took his own life in 2009, hanging himself in his home in Alaska, following a saga with depression.
Family Album: Cause + Effect captures the grief that engulfed the family following the death of Ted Hughes in 1998.
Lukacs’ sanguine personality is at odds with the family he had married into.
The easy-going artist was born in Hungary, before migrating to Sydney in 1958.
He studied for three years at the National Art School before moving to Perth in 1971 and completing his art degree at WAIT (now Curtin University).
Art is in Lukacs’ DNA: His father was a recognised painter and enjoyed a stint in the Vatican as an art restorer and conservator.
Following his divorce from Frieda, Lukacs returned to Perth and has a new partner, an old childhood friend.
“It’s good to be back in WA, and take stock of everything that has happened, but sometimes I get itchy feet,” admits the wanderlust who has enjoyed spells living in Mexico, Italy and the UK.
The Millions—a series of large figurative-decorative paintings—and some intimate oil portraits inspired by his partner complete the exhibition.
But it will be Family Album that will pique audiences’ curiosity—a gloomy peek into the Plath-Hughes legacy.
For the Record 2013 is at Moore’s gallery, Fremantle until June 16.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK