Painting by Dr. Ellen Frank of Cities of Peace

In this painting, I see a young woman born standing up in the Fall. She is full of flowers—a tattooed soul both frail and forever. She is new. And because she is new, she is a calf, meaning the joints in her legs wobble knock-kneed and bolded to support her stature. Standing, nonetheless. This young woman is simply existing; she is surely not dead but has yet to come alive. Her only claim to life are her flowers. They sprout up her neck into an endless threshold, while also playing tic-tac-toe down her legs. I was told that every once in a while, she’ll peel one off, dip it in gold, then sew it back into herself, this time with a surgeon’s stitch. She’s deep into her flowers.

     To her left is an outline of a dead woman with a skirt on. The dead woman, however, gets to wear a skirt to cover her shame. Why does she have a skirt on? & What is her shame? is unknown to the young woman, but she is holding her hand anyway. The dead woman is filled with people--some sad, some happy, some confused as to how they’ve even ended up there. Regardless, all those people are in exchange with the dead woman—giving money and taking, like the buffet she is. 

     To the right of the young woman are her parents, and as you can see, they are diving into the body of the young woman. The man is on top, becoming the business owner of her wits. The woman is on the bottom with her womb on fire. I would imagine that’s why she jumped—to cool off the burning in her own body. The origin of her fire is also unknown to the young woman, but it looks like it had to do with people diving into her body as well.

   Life is fruitful inside and outside of the young woman. That’s why the pastures are luscious and green. That's why the flowers grow beyond gold, and beyond the young woman. That’s also why there are people everywhere, dancing and swimming and building homes throughout the painting. Sometimes the people are brown, sometimes they’re gold. They’re all however, foreign to the body of the young woman. 

     The charge of this painting comes from the perspective. The parents dove inside the young woman in front of everyone. Not only did this teach the people to also dive inside her with all their problems and desires, but it also left the young woman’s flowers that she worked so hard on, vulnerable to be picked apart...petal by petal. 

     I wonder what happens in this painting when the young woman decides to come alive—when she decides to be more than a community swimming pool. For her sake, I hope she’s a fool.