Sue Hubbard

Girl in White

“The poet and art critic, Sue Hubbard, has written a richly layered book about Paula Modersohn-Becker, … In Hubbard’s moving imagining of Paula’s story, she creates a believable, parallel tale about Paula’s daughter Mathilde, a violinist.”

Sipora Levy Jewish Chronicle 27^th February 2013

“Imagine a chest of drawers – unopened for a hundred years. Inside small garments carefully folded. A woman today opens the drawers, unfolds what she finds and, as she does so, the garments become stories. The chest of drawers belonged to the painter, Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907). … (and contain) the secrets of some exceptional, very lonely paintings, which had a considerable influence on “modern” German art. …those intimate folds become interstices of History, beyond any notion of what is modern or not. I recommend this haunting book.”

John Berger

Beautifully written and wholly knowledgeable – Girl in White is a triumph of literary and artistic understanding, a tour du force: masterly, moving. ‘Hubbard goes where few dare go, and succeeds. You are the less for not reading it.

Fay Weldon

Rothko's Red

Evidence of the poet's gift for imagery - "the wind snaps at the washing, filling out the drying shirts like the bloated bodies of the drowned" - is in plentiful supply. Of the ten stories, only two are in the first person. The second and last in the book is nakedly personal, and all the more powerful for it.

Nicholas Royle The Independent 9^th September 2009

Each story in this, Hubbard's first collection of short fiction is nominally centred around art. But what truly links the pieces herein is the themes of longing, loss and melancholy, and a sense that not even an intimate knowledge of the beautiful and the sublime can protect one from the daily tragedies of life.

The collection is quiet, almost to the point of defiance, but in its understated, delicate descriptions of the mundane, Rothko's Red has an acute power.

The New Statesman

Adventures in Art

'It's beautifully written and you'll find quotes and references that illuminate rather than weigh down her prose… her descriptive powers are peerless as she brings these works to life: the chapters on Rothko and Howard Hodgkin are particularly impressive.'

Metro June 2010

This is a really insightful book! Sue Hubbard has been looking at contemporary and modern art for twenty years: her keen poet's eye leads her to perceive things not always evident to the rest of us. Most gratifyingly, she writes a pleasing, lucid prose which makes complex ideas accessible and leaves us enriched by the clarity of her values.

These essays tackle a swathe of all that has been happening in painting and sculpture over recent decades. Their range is truly impressive: from Christian Boltanski to Helen Chadwick, from Anselm Kiefer to Jane and Louise Wilson. Along the way, Hubbard's own taste and judgement has evolved, giving us a vivid sense of what these turbulent creative times have been like. Their cumulative effect is to indicate the direction modern art is taking, and help us grapple with its meaning.

Joan Bakewell

Depth of Field

'Highly evocative… the rare quality, not of a text but of a place. It surrounds its readers and waits until they see in the dark and make their own discoveries.'

John Berger

Depth of Field is an accute observation of the nature of identity and memory. Hannah's close observation of the physical world, both in the country and the East End, embues it with a deep sense of both history and place. John Berger has described the novel as 'highly evocative' giving 'the rare quality, not of a text, but of a place. It surrounds its readers and waits until they see in the dark to make their own discoveries.'