Natalie Frank Woman and Dog, 2020, edition of 30

This hand-painted lithograph and woodblock print titled Woman and Dog is a limited edition of 30. The artwork is from the artist's series of drawings and paintings featuring images of women and animals. In many fairy tales, animals are women's companions, as either men transformed, or as women in alternate states, the shape shifting representing the ability to transcend class and social structures. 

“I recast and reframe women’s oral tales in my work. Woman and Dog pairs a couple that I have used in many paintings and drawings. There are so many courtly portraits of women and men, women pictured in the subservient position to their husbands, usually kings. I wanted to eschew this and make the woman the “king” and her dog, her loyal companion.” 

Frank’s work frequently grapples with the mythmaking surrounding gendered roles in cultural lore, collaborating with the fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes in drawings based on his translated text in Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Drawings by Natalie Frank (Damiani 2015); The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Princeton University Press 2016) and the forthcoming volume, Madame d'Aulnoy (Princeton University Press 2021). 

In 2019, Frank collaborated with Ballet Austin on an award-winning production of a ballet based on her book of the Grimm's fairy tales, entitled Grimm Tales, for which she served as creative director. Frank also drew the Story of O, the erotic novel about one woman’s journey to understand her own desires, a beacon of sex positive feminism. 

A portion of the sale proceeds will benefit Dieu Donné, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving artists through the collaborative creation of contemporary art using the process of hand papermaking.