Árbol de la esperanza, mantente firme

The ‘tree of hope’ was painted by Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter. She is best known for her self portraits. One of her self portraits was the ‘tree of hope’ painting which she had done in 1946. She learned painting by herself and she was sick for many years after she met a bus accident at the age of 18. She suffered severe injuries, which includes her broken collar bone, broken ribs and pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg with dislocated right foot and dislocated shoulder. Even though she had recovered her injuries after three months, she had relapses and was bedridden the whole time. Because of it, she was not able to conceive a baby, leaving her more depressed.

When I looked at the painting for the first time, I saw two women in the portrait, where one is wounded with a deep cut on her back, lying on the hospital gurney, while the other one beside her is another woman who is wearing a beautiful red dress. She looks peaceful and calm, and is seated next to her. The painting has two sides- the day side and the night side. Looking at the day side, it shows the reality of the wounded woman. She has got a very deep long cut from her back and it looks like she is suffering severe pain from it. She has to lie in her bed in such a way that the wound shouldn't touch any surface which includes her dress and blanket and has to stay half naked until her wound gets healed. The surroundings on the day-side looked very hot and dry, and that indication is clear when I saw the land, which looks like it is experiencing a drought. When I looked more closely on the day-side, I could sense that she is sweating, maybe through her pain or the environment around her. At the end of her hair, it looks like her hair is half soaked and it is maybe by her sweat that made it appeared like that. Looking at the wound deeply, I feel the blood and sweat seems to blend together and is flowing down on her back, making it more tickling for her, and couldn't rub off because it will hurt her more. So she has to bear all this until her wound gets healed. This was the disturbing part of her portrait.    

Looking at the night side, the atmosphere looks rather cool and the woman is wearing red dress holding a flag and a belt, which is supposedly to be the corset. The red color used in her dress is to show power or the strength to overcome the difficulty and pain faced by her. She holds a flag with a Spanish saying ‘Árbol de la esperanza, mantente firme’, which means ‘tree of hope, stay firm’. It looks like the woman is not ready to give up because there is a hope that something better is going to happen to the other woman beside her (which is she herself). On the whole, the woman on the daylight looks uncomfortable to see because of the pain she goes through, whereas at the night side, the woman looks very much strong and alive.

Frida Kahlo used warm and cool colors to signify the warmth of the day and the coolness at night respectively. She used red, yellow and orange colors for the daylight. For night she used cool colors like blue that recede on the background and warm colors also that comes in front of the picture, like her dress are painted in red and cheeks in yellow-red. She also used complementary colors like yellow and dark green together to highlight the upper part of her dress. The red dress worn in the painting is Tehuana. Tehuana is a traditional Mexican dress. “According to legend, Tehuana women were the real figures of authority in their society, and Kahlo’s wearing of such outfits was a demonstration of strength and will.”

A painting can express someone’s ideas, emotions, past stories and it can be communicated to the audience. In this painting, Frida was expressing her inner emotions after she met the bus accident, leaving her bedridden for few months. Even though she was sick and weak, she was strong from inside. She was hoping that she will become the same old person before the accident. Yet, her fate has changed once she has got relapses. But then, she couldn't stop living. She decided to paint from her bed itself with the help of her lap easel, which was given by her mother. Most of the portraits she made got some linked with her emotions after the bus accident like Broken Column (1944), Henry Ford hospital (1932), the bus (1929), and the Accident (1926), where she shared similar experience like the tree of hope painting.

From the portrait, I feel that the word ‘hope’ is very important in each one of our lives. Some say hoping too much can make you self-depress at the end. Well yes it does, but I feel it is necessary to do it so as it is the only thing that makes us move forward. Every human being does hope for something or someone and making it successfully is the real bliss we experience in our life. We always hope for something better when we are living on our darkest days and it is easier to loose it when one doesn't counts on it.

On the whole, the painting tree of hope is really beautiful yet a heartbreaking work, and more than that I like the way she inspired us and make us believe that life doesn't end there, it can be go on when one has the ‘hope to live’ and eventually she did proved herself to us through her paintings.