Brooklyn Rail - Art Review - April 1, 2017
In the early days of Sue Williams’s career, her work frequently centered on male violence perpetrated on women. Vignettes of rape, sodomy, and battery pervaded her canvases, rendered in comic-book style with figures depicted in black and white, and incorporated text. Caustic humor was to be found in these memorable paintings, though due to the painful subject matter, it was often of a “laughing so you don’t cry” variety. Williams’s frankness about the violence she experienced in her own past compounded their wincing intimacy. These traumas were part of her story.