The paintings of Frank M. Alba hover somewhere between allegory and fantasy. When he represents objects and entities familiar to the viewer, he portrays them in such a way that their unusual connotations are stripped away. In this manner, a child, a corridor, a facial expression comes to feel strangely uncanny and dream-like.

In Rebirth, the way Alba weaves a symbolic, almost moralistic tone into his scenes is plainly visible. The embryo of a child is floating near a photograph on a table. Below the table, floating in spectral transparency, is the face of a watch. All these elements come together in terms of the title of the painting; but even without this title a kind of narrative relates the child, the photograph, and the watch. This sense of time passing, of a story being told, derives from the way the embryo supplies the painting’s primary light source. However surreal, grim, or nightmarish this scene might appear, the ghostly fetus (a future rebirth) is the painting’s true point of origin.