Marcia Rackow, painter, critic, & Terrain Gallery coordinator, spoke on this work in a talk at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts:

“In this courageous work, Dorothy Koppelman gives dramatic form to the fight in every person—between being awake to what’s around us, or being oblivious to everything. In the center of the canvas, dramatically tipped up parallel to the picture plane, is the nude figure of a woman, her eyes closed, asleep.

“Surprisingly, her head is at the bottom of the canvas instead of the top. She seems to be at once falling and caught in space. Her long extended arm, and breast, are as white as the cool white surface she lies on. White has stood for blankness and this woman is in danger of receding into blankness. Yet that white reaches up towards the top of the canvas where its rough edge meets a deep, rich red, the color of life, that comes from underneath.

“The kindness of this painting is that this woman is not alone. That dog—standing for ‘conscience’—is on guard. It won’t allow her to put aside the world. While it seems to be protecting her, it’s also trying almost desperately to shake the woman, wake her, as it looks out at us with an intense, critical, yet almost pleading gaze. One of the moving things about this dog is that it has a human-like expression. And as it looks directly at us, it seems to be questioning us—be our conscience too!

“The thick paint has substance and motion—opposing the stillness and vacancy of the figure. The head is a warm pinkish color, which is also in the legs, and we feel something of life being awakened. The painting is a critical, hopeful warning!”

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