Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'To know is enough. To know we killed her together. I willed it, he took the blame, but we did it together. One day he'll look me full in the face and he'll sat it. He'll say: You know why it happened. Yes, I'll say, I know. The air will be noise enough, we won't need more words, but he'll say a few because I am a child. We did it because I know the secret. I am the secret.
'If Leaning Towards Infinity explored the relationship between mothers and daughters and the pursuit of mathematics, Painted Woman gives us the tight and tangled knot binding a father and daughter, and the pursuit of art. Death and art, violence and love, possession and yearning; this is the story of the emergence of a woman artist, because of and despite all.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Notes
-
Dedication: For my daughter.
-
Epigraph: Violence is the heart and soul of the sacred. - Rene Girard.
-
Epigraph: You move into a painted world where nothing is locked by line and everything exists in a boundless state of transformation and becoming. - Peter Fuller.
-
Epigraph: Cruelty emerges nakedly in works of art as soon as their spell begins to lose its hold. Every work of art is a desecration of silence, wishing it were possible to restore that silence. - Theodore Adorno.
-
Adapted by the author for the 1991 stage play Painted Woman.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also large print.
Works about this Work
-
Emerging from Entrapment : Sue Woolfe’s Modern Gothic Painted Woman
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , no. 42 2017;'In this article, I examine the Gothic generic, narrative and conceptual strategies Sue Woolfe uses to describe creative emergence from the effects of intergenerational trauma and the impact on modalities of subjectivity in Painted Woman (1990), a tale of incest and disavowed artistry. The deployment of the Gothic subverts expectations of power relations, engenders the development of new paradigmatic writing forms, and shows the presence/lack of agency from within the traumatic space. Woolfe reframes embodied experience through experimentation with assumptions around signifying practices, generates radical language through which to testify to trauma and suggest that from abjective experience, empowerment and transformation are not only possible, but also essential.' (Publication abstract)
-
The Puzzle of the Muse
2013
single work
prose
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , October vol. 17 no. 2 2013; -
Sue Woolfe
Pradeep Trikha
(interviewer),
2007
single work
interview
— Appears in: Delphic Intimations : Dialogues with Australian Writers and Critics 2007; (p. 148-153) -
The Image in Text
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 16 no. 2 2002; (p. 169-170) Ahlstrom examines the interplay between paintings and the writing of David Brookes and Sue Woolfe. -
Murdering the Muse : Creativity and Violence in Sue Woolfe's Painted Woman
2001
single work
criticism
— Appears in: CRNLE Journal 2001; (p. 32-41) Kossew follows the novel's account of the emergence of a young woman artist from her father's physical and psychological control and her finding of her own artistic voice. She explores the social acceptance of violence as a legitimate expression of a man's passion, and the link between physical violence and artistic creation.
-
Paperbacks
1990
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 15-16 December 1990; (p. rev 7)
— Review of Ancestors 1989 single work novel ; Painted Woman 1989 single work novel -
[Review] Charades, Flawless, The Mountain, Painted Woman, My Father's Moon
1990
single work
review
— Appears in: The Phoenix Review , Spring/Summer no. 6 1990; (p. 116-119)
— Review of My Father's Moon 1989 single work novel ; Painted Woman 1989 single work novel ; Charades 1988 single work novel ; The Mountain 1989 selected work correspondence ; Flawless Jade 1989 single work novel -
Paperbacks
1991
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Herald (Sunday Review) , 27 January 1991; (p. 17)
— Review of Blessed City : The Letters of Gwen Harwood to Thomas Riddell, January to September 1943 1990 selected work correspondence ; Painted Woman 1989 single work novel ; Seven Poor Men of Sydney 1934 single work novel -
Painted Woman She May Be, But Never Fallen
1989
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 23 September 1989; (p. 82)
— Review of Living Alone 1989 single work novel ; Painted Woman 1989 single work novel -
Telling the Truth
1989
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Society , August 1989; (p. 43-45)
— Review of Heartland 1992 single work novel ; Painted Woman 1989 single work novel -
The Image in Text
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 16 no. 2 2002; (p. 169-170) Ahlstrom examines the interplay between paintings and the writing of David Brookes and Sue Woolfe. -
Sue Woolfe
Pradeep Trikha
(interviewer),
2007
single work
interview
— Appears in: Delphic Intimations : Dialogues with Australian Writers and Critics 2007; (p. 148-153) -
The Life of Art: Sue Woolfe on Art and Representation
Elizabeth Pedersen
(interviewer),
1999
single work
interview
— Appears in: Southerly , Spring-Summer vol. 59 no. 3-4 1999; (p. 172-179) -
Sue Woolfe : "Painted Woman"
Sue Woolfe
,
Kate Grenville
,
1993
single work
criticism
interview
— Appears in: Making Stories : How Ten Australian Novels Were Written 1993; (p. 252-281) -
Coincidence in a White Frock
1996
single work
biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 17 August 1996; (p. 10s)
- Bush,
- Sydney, New South Wales,
- Blue Mountains, Sydney, New South Wales,
- Urban,
