"I have finally come to understand something about the big grey painting you saw in the studio. I know what it is now. It came to me quite suddenly. It is called the 'Deathrose' and I understand why I haven’t been able to work on it for some months. It is only half of the idea. And for two months I’ve been working on something else I started a year ago. It is 'The Jewel' – a kind of life symbol – in color and stated visually so that all the weight and space comes forward whereas in the 'Deathrose' everything recedes." - Jay DeFeo, letter to J. Patrick Lannan, collector, 1959. Archive of The Jay DeFeo Foundation, Berkeley, CA. "The Jewel" is currently on view within LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Modern Art collection presented on Level 3 of the museum. Follow this link for additional information about the installation: https://ow.ly/UVCi50WG2Ts [Jay DeFeo on a ladder with "The Jewel," before the opening of "Jay DeFeo: Selected Works, Past and Present (Adaline Kent Award Exhibition)." San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, April 18 - May 12, 1984. © 2025 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York] (fb)

"As curator Dana Miller has noted, DeFeo 'never hesitated to tackle the biggest subjects and imagery of all: cosmic and terrestrial forces of nature and the other worlds inhabited by the imagination and the spirit.' Yet this mystical penchant was closely linked for DeFeo to the power and presence of the everyday – common objects as well as elements of nature. DeFeo’s attraction to the forms of flowers, plants, trees and other living natural elements showed an avowed affinity for the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. DeFeo commented on her own interest in plants and floral imagery as being archetypal yet also ambiguous. For her, they embodied visual rather than literary ideas." - Elizabeth A.T. Smith, “Jay DeFeo: “A Gambler and an Alchemist,” “Jay DeFeo: Trees,” exh. cat (Pasadena: Laguna Art Museum; 2024). [Jay DeFeo, Untitled, 1989, Charcoal and oil pastel on paper, 11 x 8 1/2 inches (27.9 x 21.6 cm). © 2025 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York] (fb)