Illustrated History of the Universe

At home the day after a lovely Christmas. To accompany the beautiful sunny day outside and the fact that all of my kids are home for the holidays, I offer the painting shown above, "Illustrated History of the Universe", by Beat generation visual artist, Jay Defeo. I saw this piece in the Oakland Museum of California (see Oakland Museum of California) and spent a long time gazing at it – and thinking about the universe.

From the signage: "The abstract composition has a light gray impasto surface with a dark gray outline of a circle that appears above center and slightly to the left. Small dots of dark gray paint are splattered across the surface in several places, and a gestural gray line appears at upper right. The artist's handprint is visible at bottom left. A small arrow with "up" appears at top center". Just so you know.

Happy holidays.