Susan Dorothea White Bibliography

Critical evaluation:

Susan Dorothea White, an internationally exhibited painter and sculptor from Australia whose work is in The National Gallery, a­ mong other prestigious public and private collec­ tions, explores the most intimate experiences of her life, as well as more topical subjects, in meticulous­ ly limned acrylic paintings on wood panels. Her a­ bility to examine unflinchingly such personal mile­ stones as her surgery for a benign brain tumor with a dazed self-portrait in a vertiginously askew hospi­ tal setting results in some of the most emotionally jarring narrative imagery in recent art. However, her work can also be informed by an appealing lightheartedness, as seen in her whimsical picture of her professorial husband suspended in mid-air with a book seeming to take flight, like a startled bird, from his hands. She is also a strong social satirist, particularly in paintings such as "The Crowning with Sexism", which combines icono­ graphic images of Marilyn Monroe and Joe Di Mag­ gio with a composition borrowed from Hieronymus Bosch. (Andrew Margolis)