Susan Sellers
"You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you really loved me."
Vanessa and Virginia are sisters, best friends, bitter rivals, and artistic collaborators. As children, they fight for attention from their overextended mother, their brilliant but difficult father, and their adored brother, Thoby. As young women, they support each other through a series of devastating deaths, then emerge in bohemian Bloomsbury, bent on creating new lives and groundbreaking works of art. Through everything-marriage, lovers, loss, madness, children, success and failure-the sisters remain the closest of co-conspirators. But they also betray each other.
In this lyrical, impressionistic account, written as a love letter and elegy from Vanessa to Virginia, Sellers imagines her way into the heart of the lifelong relationship between writer Virginia Woolf and painter Vanessa Bell. With sensitivity, imagination, and fidelity to what is known of both lives, Sellers has created a powerful portrait of sibling rivalry.
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Extract from Vanessa and Virginia
A wall of orange ablaze in the sun, the glow of hot coals. My colours have the sheen of silk, the rough textures of hessian. In the top right-hand corner of my painting is a pale pink square, edged in blue. The clash between the pink and orange is violent, compelling, gorgeous. I mute it slightly by adding a daub of white to the pink, but only slightly. I do not want to diminish the effect. On the left of my canvas I paint a series of rectangles. Some interconnect, some stand alone. I paint two of them blue, one a potent aquamarine, the other paler, and tempered with the same hint of whiteness as the pink. I am careless with the outlines. I have had too many years of cloying detail. What interests me is the impact of colours.
In the centre of my picture I paint a single rectangle. It is a rich, crimson red with traces of darker vermilion. It dazzles and sizzles against the orange. It is the corollary of Father, the antidote to all we have left behind. I revel in its daring. I turn my attention to the two remaining bars. I paint one green, a blue-sage, slightly chalky. For the other I choose a strong burgundy.
I am fascinated by the way the different reds shun and call to each other. Sometimes, when I stand back from my canvas, I can see nothing else. The way the orange recedes against their impact astonishes me. I cannot believe the past has already lost its power. I turn my attention to my central rectangle. I am audacious. I will create the spaces I need. I will be mistress in my own house.