At first glance Janet Block's detailed vignettes-"Folk Tales From Home"--might appear an innocent and quaint memory of remembrances of things past. The style of her work seems to invite one to feel comfortable with her naive folk-artish images. The decorative invitation of her surfaces and her use of birds, insects and flowers as motifs seem to exude a symbolist charm. Block's works further invite engagement with the viewer through her use of illuminated Medieval manuscript design, present in scrolling decorative line work and perfectly written script texts. But behind the seeming charm a bitter poison seeps to the surface. The floral decorations turn into Fleurs du Mal and butterflies and birds come to seem excessive in a mocking or hypocritical way. The quaintly styled scenes are filled with painful and unresolved conflicts, often focusing on Block's relationship with her mother. Block's works tell the so called "folk tales" of reality--bitter and unjust truths that mock the idea of the traditional folk stories and their often happy endings. instead Block focuses on the truth of harsh realities from her own experience. The meticulous decoration surrounding each image is only there to enshrine a memory in ironic bitterness, creating a beautiful trap for the viewer unsuspectingly drawn to each image's seemingly innocent appearance. They become tokens of an irretrievable loss, ensnaring the viewer with decorative beauty used as a kind of bait. The viewer then becomes hooked into the chain of suffering that exists in Block's family narratives which inexorably leads from past to present.

In the painting Martyr, Block presents a seemingly innocuous image of a smiling woman in a white raincoat surrounded by trees and flowers. Yet a different meaning comes to the fore upon reading Block's delicately subscripted text "My mother took pleasure in her suffering. It entitled her to her bitchiness." Suddenly the naive style of the painting becomes menacing, a false mask hiding the truth, the roses hypocritical, the smiling face a patent lie.

The tragic distortions in BlockÕs relationship to her mother become more painfully clear in her painting My Living Doll. Block is shown holding her mother and brushing her hair--a reversal of roles further edified by the text:

I took care of my mother the way she wished to be cared for and the way I wished to
be cared for as well. I bathed her, fed her, changed her, and held her like a baby
and dressed her up like a favorite doll.
Block exists in an adult state as the wise child--attentive to the needs of a parent that can only see her as an extension of herself. Block is caught in a painful snare that does not allow her own need to be fulfilled; indeed she is trapped in a child-like state with her mother only being capable of giving in a regressed manner like a child playing with dolls. The tragedy of Block's maternal manipulation is more deeply reinforced by a banner above the image on which is written "I had no need to reproduce," signaling the depth of loss that the cancellation of her own needs cost her.

In the triptych painting Till Death Do Us Part the parent-child relationship is once again shown in reverse, with Block holding her mother like a frightened child or giving her a piggyback ride. In the central panel a skeleton leads her mother away, crowned with the banner "There is a beginning and end to all" as if to finally give some closure to this complex relationship.

Yet there is a healing element in this work which bears a similarity to the artworks of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Khalo suffered from a terrible bus accident with serious bodily injury, yet she used her art as a cathartic means of dealing with her pain--a way of dealing with the unresolved living memory of the past into the present. Kahlo's work was influenced by Ex Voto Mexican art--popular religious imagery which portrayed images of both suffering as well as the miraculous as an aide to transcendence. Similarly, Block's paintings are meant to be containers of her pain which she desires to expiate. Block is attempting a kind of transcendence on a personal secular level in the "Folk Tales From Home" paintings, a way of reconciling herself to and working through the injustices and pains of the past.