NARRATOR:  

In 1967, the year Incision was finished, Jay DeFeo wrote that “Although I am a painter by definition, my work as it has emerged in the past two years could more accurately be described as a combination of painting and sculpture. I consider the aspects of each inseparable and interdependent.” 

Weighing nearly five hundred pounds, this piece is made up of layer upon layer of oil paint clinging precariously to a canvas surface. As in most of her work, DeFeo has used only black, white, and a full range of grays to convey a sense of volcanic upheaval. Rather than appearing to be the product of a human hand, Incision looks as if it were a slice of an ancient, primeval landscape, incised from the earth and elevated onto the wall. Notice the few strings embedded in the scraped and parched surface, hanging down like dead strands of grass, roots, sinew,s or veins. The overwhelming physicality and rawness of DeFeo’s paint dominates this work, but the inky darkness of the upper right section hovers over the entire painting and lends it an atmosphere of brooding intensity. 

The tradition of abstract, “action” painting that traveled from New York to San Francisco was important to DeFeo’s work. But like many of her compatriots in the flourishing, often rebellious Bay Area art scene of the late 1950s, she also drew inspiration from jazz, poetry, and mysticism.