ABSTRACT
Joy McCullough’s 2018 verse novel Blood Water Paint is the first novel to imagine Artemisia’s story for a Young Adult (YA) audience. The novel takes as its focus Artemisia’s girlhood, and the novel ends after the rape trial of Agostino Tassi. Blood Water Paint is a portrait of the young Artemisia for the #MeToo generation, a novel that positions trauma as key to understanding Artemisia’s art while at the same time affirming her ability to overcome her circumstances. McCullough’s representation of Artemisia differs from other Artemisia biofictions in its portrait of female creativity. In Blood Water Paint, it is Artemisia’s dead mother, as well as an imagined sisterhood of her artistic subjects – Susanna and Judith – who are her artistic inspirations.
