Cirrus Carcinoma ©1997 Isaac Falconer/Saku Gunasegaram. 11" x  8½" ink and oil pastel on  paper.
See this painting and others at          CrossConnect Magazine, October 1997.         
Purchased by     Carol A. Reynolds, M.D.     for her office (first at The University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and  subsequently at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, USA)
~thus changing the artist's life forever with her deep and abiding
[need we say _PLATONIC_?] NO SEX _INVOLVED_ people [!] friendship
~and generous support of all the arts, and of the visual arts in particular.
Dr. Reynolds earned the enduring platonic friendship with Dr. Gunasegaram
when she said:  "I won't sell it~ever~not even for a million dollar$-[dollars]"
in "response" to the artist's own mother's wish to sell her own daughter's gift
to her of an original Isaac Falconer/Dr. Saku Gunasegaram original  painting"for cash."

 I am an English major, so I am also very aware of words.  The title  Cirrus Carcinoma
caught my attention because "cirrus" is a type of cloud and "carcinoma," of course,
is cancer;  the connection between nature and cancer--especially breast cancer--
is one that a lot women are concerned about.  (Last year Chatham held the WASTE 
-Women Assessing the State of the Environment- conference in which 
they talked a lot about women's health issues.)  Often where nature is polluted and/or
exploited, so are women's bodies.  The flower-like petals surrounding one of the 
breasts in  Cirrus Carcinoma  also made me think a lot about this nature-body connection. 
The image is also in red--a color [UK English-spelling would be "colour"]
very often associated with women's sexuality--and the
implications of a flower (virginity) made me think this piece also spoke to certain sexual
issues.  The parts of women's bodies that often become cancerous are also the parts
most desired by men, who do quite a bit of polluting the earth.