The work of South African born painter Marlene Dumas has frequently been described as “intimate”, “conversational” and filled with “desire”. Though her work is fiercely material and painterly, and though the majority of her subjects derive from universal mass-media images or art history, a preoccupation with Dumas’ biographical self persists in most interpretations of her work. This thesis considers why this is so. I assert that Dumas’ work engages in a highly self-reflexive mode of authorial presence that is marked by a reference to its own artificiality or contrivance. I argue that, while understandable, simplistic biographical or intentional readings of Dumas’ work are unhelpful, and that Dumas’ authorial presence, more interestingly, questions the nature of authentic communication through art. This argument also suggests that the visual arts require a more nuanced understanding of the authorial self in art than has been evident to date. To demonstrate better critical engagement with the author, I refer to theories from contemporary autobiographical studies that provide a rich language of authorial presence.