Sick Clown

Moving between the triad of the female body, the gaze and the female soul, Ms. Yuskavage has cultivated a terrain of rich and disturbing ambiguities, making works that can be both tender and astoundingly harsh. She has been aided in this endeavor by her devotion to a second triad, that of light, color and flesh as they can be conveyed by the plasticity of oil paint. Roberta Smith (R. Smith, “A Painter Who Loads the Gun and Lets the Viewer Fire It”, The New York Times, January 12, 2001).