By Ellen O'Grady

When I was a kid my favorite book was a pop-up of Noah's Ark. My greatest fantasy was to live in an ark with my own family and my own personal zoo. I imagined the cold rain pounding outside against the ark's shutters, while inside the ark, all of us were safe and warm. One day my Sunday School teacher read to us from the Noah's Ark story. When she arrived at the part where the flood waters dry up, she held the book open to a picture of the sturdy, gleaming ark surrounded by the lush green trees and colorful plants, all under the beautiful rainbow in the sky. The entire class was entranced except for Joel, the boy sitting next to me. "Where are the bodies?" Joel cried out. The teacher stopped. "What bodies?" she asked. "The bodies of all the people and animals who died in the flood?" he said. She narrowed her eyes and told Joel "he was a very rude boy." But as she continued on about the rainbow in the sky, all I could see were the bodies.

It was the first time I was aware that there can be a story behind a story. A story we try to hide. Stories that people do not tell and that we are not supposed to tell. Schools, religious institutions, and science can tell us stories that lead us away from our own experience. As I grew older I became more and more interested in seeking out and telling the stories behind the stories, particularly those related to the Bible, our mythical stories, the stories on which western civilization was built. My interest in telling these hidden stories is entwined with a desire for truth and understanding. I majored in Theology in college. After college I spent six years living in Palestine and Israel, the places these stories were born and where they are often reflected on a modern (day) stage in the present conflict.

It was in Gaza and the West Bank that I began to employ paint and words to tell a story, and later, upon my return to the United States, I started to bring the paintings and stories together. The creation of the paint/word stories, the remembering of Scripture with current events and my personal history, is a journey toward truth. It is not something I do alone. Whether I am trying to understand an ancient myth, or a historical, current or personal event, I find the insights of others invaluable. The canvas of creation and inspiration is an inseparable part of understanding.

Currently, I am reading Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, which is a written synthesis of cultural history, scripture, current events and cultural theory. I find myself reading and rereading and reading aloud phrases and paragraphs that, though I may not understand fully, I know to be true. And so I reread them aloud, inviting them into my psyche and into the paint where they will emerge mirrored, though in another form. And similarly I sit with interactions I have had with friends and strangers. Sometimes it's a gesture or a story shared. Sometimes it's a shared event, as in the three-mile walk with Salwa, a 69-year-old woman with untreated diabetes, which gets told in Outside the Ark. If the gesture or story or event is important, it does not abandon me. It's as persistent as crabgrass and will emerge in paint and story when it's time has come.

More Information

The entire series is included in the book Outside the Ark: An Artist's Journey in Occupied Palestine which can be ordered from the publications section of ellenogrady.com