Introducing Death of an Artist Season 3: Petra Mathers and Her Michael

When Alice Gregory and Leon Neyfakh started building a library for their infant daughter, they stumbled across a name in an obituary that Alice recognized from her own childhood: celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Petra Mathers. Petra had died by suicide alongside her husband, Michael Mathers. Both were in their late 70s, seemingly happy and healthy.

The details of Petra and Michael’s deaths pulled Alice and Leon down a rabbit hole that neither were expecting—a plan many years in the making, dozens of letters mailed out across the country, friends and family caught between betrayal and envy, and a community grappling with their own feelings around aging and death.

Death of an Artist drops weekly on Tuesdays starting August 25. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.

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Avsnitt(21)

Episode 2: It’s Lonely Without You, Friends

“I would've screamed. I would've shouted. I would've cried out. I would've protested. I would've given a million reasons to not leave this world.” Michael and Petra left their house and the logistics ...

25 Aug 46min

Episode 1: Dear Honeys

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is about suicide. Listener discretion is advised "When Michael and I got together some 40 plus years ago, we’d always planned on checking out together." In February of 2024, ...

25 Aug 39min

Bonus: The Women on the Scene with Audrey Flack

Artist, musician and writer Audrey Flack shares her firsthand accounts of the downtown New York City art scene in the mid-twentieth-century and a song she and her band, The History of Art, wrote about...

23 Aug 202416min

Bonus: Krasner's Way with Eleanor Nairne

Katy speaks with Eleanor Nairne, who first introduced her to Lee Kranser’s work. Back in 2019, Nairne exhibited a groundbreaking retrospective of Lee Krasner’s work while she was senior curator at the...

28 Juni 202425min

Episode 6: A Phoenix From the Ashes

1956. New York City. After Pollock’s death, Krasner balances her new role as executor of his estate and her ambitions to continue making art.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

21 Juni 202424min

Episode 5: The Kiss of Death

1955. Upper West Side. Jackson Pollock seeks help from a psychotherapist practicing controversial methods.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

14 Juni 202422min

Episode 4: Jackson Pollock Inc.

1945. East Hampton. Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock start a new life in a farmhouse 100 miles east of New York City.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

7 Juni 202428min