AVAM · Flaunt: Werk of Art · silent auction
“Making Friends”
Closes Fri, Nov 13 · 10 PM ET
Bidding has closed. Thank you to everyone who bid for AVAM.
Bid on “Making Friends” →Opens the painting on AVAM’s auction page (Givebutter). Every dollar supports the American Visionary Art Museum and its new exhibition, Flaunt: When Appearance Speaks. The gala, Flaunt: Werk of Art, is that night, 7 PM–midnight.
The painting
A kiss for the calf
A girl in blue and big sneakers leans into a young calf and plants a kiss on its face. The calf looks out at us with one wide, wet eye. Dana paints it fast and loose, in her own words a girl “offering a kiss,” on a hot orange ground. It is tender and funny at once.
Why it belongs in Flaunt
Who gets the kiss, and who gets the plate?
Flaunt: When Appearance Speaks is AVAM’s 31st big themed show: about 100 works on what we say with how we look. The gala is a full-on celebration of looks, made with drag artists, the art form where appearance is the whole message.
In Dana’s paintings, appearance decides something bigger: who we love. A calf has the same big eyes and soft nose as a puppy, and that face is the whole argument of Making Friends. For years Dana has painted the animals we cuddle right beside the animals we eat, in solo shows like Speciesism (2015) and Some Animals are More Equal Than Others (2016), and in new paintings like Playing Favorites and Selective Compassion. As she told a festival audience in Riga this fall:
“I paint about all the things you’re not supposed to discuss at the dinner table — vegetarianism, veganism, religion, politics.”
So here the kiss is the flaunt: a girl showing off her love for an animal most people never get to meet face to face.
Just back from Latvia
Art for Meat Tax, Riga, September 2026
In September Dana was a featured artist at Art for Meat Tax (Māksla par gaļas nodokli), a Riga festival where artists take on how we eat, held in the cellars of the old Veldze brewery and lemonade factory. She showed 18 paintings, including Making Friends, spoke on the festival’s artist panel, was filmed painting for Latvian Television, and kept painting every day of the trip.
About the artist
Dana Ellyn is a Washington, DC painter, born in Brooklyn in 1971 and living in DC since 1989. She left her corporate job in 2002 to paint full time and has sold more than 4,500 original paintings directly to collectors. Her work has been exhibited at the American Visionary Art Museum (2016–17), the St. Petersburg Museum of Art in Russia (2018–19) and the American University Museum (2025), and she has had 27 solo shows in the US, Spain and Australia. With Matt Sesow she made 31 Days in July, a painting a day from the news, every July from 2003 to 2013, revived once in 2025 as DEFILED. She paints at her studio at 916 G Street NW, five blocks from the White House.
danaellyn.com · new paintings · her full career history · Instagram · Matt Sesow
Take the calf home. Help AVAM.
Place your bid →Proceeds support the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore. · See the whole auction · Matt Sesow’s painting in the same auction: “Large Fish with Escort” →