Lettuce Donkey I

Natalie Frank makes works in which she engages notions of power, gender, sexuality, violence, and the grotesque. She has made several series based on fairy tales and literature, with her most famous being those in The Brothers Grimm series. Frank began the works at the suggestion of the British-Portuguese artist Paula Rego, who also made works inspired by literature and nursery rhymes. In what she calls "drawings that represent a story," Frank interprets the original versions of fairy tales, presenting the stories through a more contemporary feminist lens. Frank explores the disturbing, brutal nature of these tales in vivid, powerful images in which she combines elements of figuration and abstraction.