novembre

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incision

Dear Incision,

When I saw you in person, you made me tongue tied. Yes, I know, you are dwarfed by a rightfully epic work, but you are no mere sketch. Bruce Hainley calls you and others like you �epic abstracted self-portraiture�. I looked at you and realized that you were the yang to the mandala�s yin. Not just by reputation. You are the underdog to your sister painting The Rose. You were constructed out of the emotional scurf, out of the pure learning curve from working on a main piece. You were the neglected older child, the black sheep. You�re working class. You�ve been shown a lot of things you never asked to see; one can see this in your makeup. But you wear no mask, and sometimes you let your belly hang out because you feel you�ve earned that right. At 500+ pounds, you�re no small baby. In fact, you�ve grown out of Jay DeFeo�s angry side. You�re a strong underdog.

Jay worked on you side by side with The Rose for three years, before pushing you out and away and continuing on.

I would come and visit you during the museum�s 75 Years of Looking Forward exhibition whenever I had a free lunch break. You were my anchor, back then. I�d stare at your nooks and your sides and read about conservation. I was new; I had only been working at the library a few months. I could look at you and immediately feel Jay DeFeo, and all the information surrounding her place in art history, shooting off in tangential starbursts. I could look at your imperfections and find peace.

elka

10:35 pm - 02.01.12

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