2020/129: Blood, Water, Paint -- Joy McCullough

Perhaps I don’t have blood at all.
Not really.
Only paint.
Perfectly pure
ruby red paint
flowing straight
to my heart:
    my canvas. [p. 290]

A novel in one hundred chapters, mostly blank verse, about the early life of Artermisia Gentileschi. Artemisia's monologue is punctuated by the stories her dead mother told her: Judith, Susannah. And sometimes these Biblical heroines, these women who fought back, are present with Artemisia in her moments of despair.

I find this quite a difficult book to review, and not only because of the blank verse. Artemisia seems a very modern seventeen-year-old, and she bears an understandable grudge against her brothers (for being granted more education despite their lack of artistic talent) and her father (for passing off her work as his own). She desperately misses her mother, and her only female companion is Tuzia, a middle-aged servant who does not necessarily have Artemisia's well-being at heart.

In this account of her story, Artemisia is not wholly averse to Tassi, her tutor. 'Every time he’s near it feels like brushstrokes on a canvas', [loc. 955]. In his favour, unlike all the other men of her acquaintance, he seems to be taking her seriously as an artist. It's not until Tassi is touching her, regardless of her consent, that she realises this is not a courtship. 'Hands on bodies have no in-between. Love or possession.' [loc. 1217]

Even before this, though, McCullough shows us the roots of Artemisia's anger, and how it's reflected in her art: her awareness of the realities of women's lives, an understanding opaque to her father or her tutor. She recognises Susanna's shame and impotent fury at being observed bathing; she empathises with the fury that gives Judith strength to decapitate Holofernes.

Blood, Water, Paint is written (or at least marketed) for a young-adult audience, and I think it serves that audience very well. There is a great afterword: "You may recognize yourself in parts of Artemisia’s story in much the same way Artemisia recognized herself in Susanna’s and Judith’s stories. Sometimes it feels like little has changed. But there are resources available to today’s survivors of sexual violence." I do recognise myself, and especially my teenaged self, in Artemisia's anger and her sense of injustice. And I'm glad that there are so many more ways, now, to talk about that.

This novel fulfils the 'A Book about a Woman Artist' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.