Girl in a Pink Dress by Kylie Needham reviews the story of two artists | Book

QThe title of Kylie Needham’s debut novel refers to a painting of a young woman in a pink dress against a backdrop of blue bruises and large black skin. This is an obvious but apt metaphor in a book about women in art, about women in the world.

He looked sad, Needham wrote; darkness is immeasurable form. The prose is perhaps not visually and poetically surprising, given Needham’s background. An award-winning screenwriter in her own right, Needham has first-hand experience of the fine arts world through her husband, renowned Australian artist Ben Quilty. At first it may seem like this is just another book about art and passion but, like the wildly seductive landscape Frances paints, the heart of both the book and the titular girl, this story has a lot more depth than it first meets the eye.

When Frances receives an invitation to a retrospective by renowned painter Clem Hughes, she reflects on her past as a lover, and the impact their relationship has had on their life and art. As a student, Frances was seduced by Clem’s passion for his art and by the thrill of catching his eye. But as their relationship developed, Frances began to compare her desires with her ambitions, and wondered if both could really be fulfilled at once.

Needham and her contemporaries write increasingly frequently into the spectrum of frustration and anger ambitious female artists might feel towards their rightful male counterparts (and sometimes lovers). Madelaine Lucas’ latest novel Thirst for Salt speaks to very similar themes of older men, privilege, art, family and ambition. Which is not to say that any of the books are derivative, but there are a growing number of works that ask these questions: can women have a domestic life? And creative? And is it love that stands in the way of art, or children, or husbands, or desires?

In this novel, Frances takes a bit of time to get angry, though when she does it is very satisfying. At first, Clem’s seduction of her was confident and reckless when he first went to her house to sit for her, Frances knew from the start that the day would end in sex. Needham didn’t write Clem as a scoundrel, or even a playboy; their relationship is written as valid and reciprocal. There is, however, a frustrating familiarity to Clem’s rights and privileges: the son of the two-time Archibald award-winning painter who has been raised with all the benefits of wealth and professional connections. Clem’s art is dark and abstract, divisive but critically acclaimed: lots of floating limbs and thick, heavy paint. His success came easily, to the point where some critics accused him of being given easy access because of his father’s reputation.

Frances, on the other hand, paints landscapes that have garnered a modest but dedicated following among mature and wealthy women in east Sydney: lips and fingernails painted coral red, diamond rings like cobblestones slipping sideways on arthritic fingers, voice like familiar pebbles. be heard. His work is calmer than Clems, though no less passionate.

But unlike Clem, French art is tempered by problems of economics and ambition, a source of tension between the two, and a provocation to the reader. Like her art, Frances’ narrative voice is honest and unadorned, an antidote to the kind of high-end vernacular so often associated with the art world. Frances is uncomfortable in this world from the start, much more at home in her decrepit cottage in Bald Hill, with her former neighbor Rina. She refuses to live up to the expectations of the art world and the men around her, and while this prevented her from receiving the kind of critical acclaim Clem heaped on it, it hasn’t stopped her from finding success of her own.

In the prologue, Frances stands awkwardly in the gallery for the Clems exhibition. He saw two men looking at the painting of the girl in pink, and then looking at him. They say the woman in the painting is me, he thought. But by the end of this gently alluring novel, that fact is far less certain is Frances the lady in the pink dress? Or did the artist perhaps catch something else altogether, an accidental revelation that might even surprise him?