Echo if not rhyme

Tyler Green issued a call for painting (visual) rhymes.  I drew a blank, and even considered the ghoul on my closet door's resemblence to Munch's The Scream before admitting that finding things in wood grain would be cheating.

Then I saw a sunburst carving at Bethesda Terrace in Central Park yesterday and immediately thought of Jay DeFeo's The Rose.  They may not rhyme, but they echoed for me.


The sunburst carving on the left is a simple and powerful abstract landscape; it makes the other isolated carvings there look corny (though the witch on broomstick is pretty good).  The Rose is on the right; that puny image is the best I could find.  The real thing measures roughly 11 by 8 feet, is 11 inches thick, and weighs about a ton.

The story about DeFeo and the work is what interests people: she worked on it for years, putting down coat after coat.  The painting was sealed behind a wall at the S.F. Art Institute for years before it was restored with a process that sounds archaeological, propping up its sagging crust and filling pockets of air (undoubtedly left by painting over undried oil paint; drying time and painter's fever don't go together, and you can wind up with an oily baklava, rotting from the inside).

DeFeo painted a thousand skins, burying all but one, and massaged The Rose until the thing itself emerged from the picture, evidence of her determination.