SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH 2001 (LES FLEURS CACHEES DANS LA FEU)
SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH 2001
(Les Roses Cachee Dans La Feu)
Original_ 2001_ Oil on Canvas_ 20 in. x 30 in.
About the painting, compiled from various sources:
“This painting was titled ‘Les Roses Cachèes Dans Le Feu.’ It began a yellow, orange and red floral. A tv on in the background played news coverage from the WTC on a loop while I stood alone in my Hermosa Beach garage and painted. I was so upset by the news that day and smooshed all the flowers then collapsed on the garage steps head in hands and cried. After awhile, I stood. I thought about what had happened on 9/11, I turned back to my canvas, and I put the flowers back into the painting.
Strangely, many people started commenting about images they saw in the painting ~ a German Shepherd search dog with his head bent down looking through the rubble and a shovel next to him; a weeping Angel; a man with his head wrapped in bandages; a fireman with a search lamp on his helmet and a hose strapped over one shoulder taking aim at the flames all around. I see some of these images, not all, but I can assure you that not one of them was placed there intentionally by me.
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“A neighbor of mine named Shain kept telling me about the woman’s face in the upper right corner of the canvas, her head tilted to the right with tears streaming down her cheeks. She told me about the German Shepherd’s head bowed down his nose covered by a cloth while searching through the ground. “He’s in the lower right next to a shovel,” she repeated for the third time, but I could NOT see him (I think perhaps because I knew I didn’t paint any such thing). And then a small local paper - The Tolucan Times - ran the image in the pages of their news and at first it didn’t look like my painting at all. Then I realized that they had inadvertently reversed the image flipping it right/left 180 degrees - in error. But when I saw it this way I was finally able to see the German Shepherd. There he was clear as day in the lower right corner of the painting. That was really a strange feeling to see such a detailed and specific image so clearly, and yet, knowing that you didn’t put it there, knowing that you had not painted it.
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“The fireman is top center,” said the delivery man. Sandy looked up from behind her desk and stared at him.
I had just had the painting professionally photographed and it was in my car and I was stopping en route home to speak with Sandy, my friend and agent. I parked outside her then office in L.A. and didn’t want to leave the painting in the car, so I brought it inside with me to Sandy’s office.
And we were sitting in her office on opposite sides of her desk just talking and chilling and the painting was propped up on a chair against the wall across from and between the two of us. I had told Sandy the story about the extraordinary and inexplicable attention my website -this painting - was getting following an Artshow in which the piece first appeared. I had mentioned that people were studying this piece and asking me all sorts of questions about what I was trying to say and were reporting the images they saw and asking about these images. I had no idea what they were referring to and had asked my neighbor Shain if she saw any images in my work. And Shain was a bit surprised to learn that none of the images were out there intentionally and that I didn’t see them - and couldn’t see them - even when they were pointed out to me. And everyone was seeing many of the same images but also seeing different ones as well. I told Sandy how I repeatedly had had to explain to people, “It’s just flowers, nothing more.” But some people couldn’t accept that and were offering all sorts of explanations for how the imagery got there.
And at that moment a UPS delivery guy walked into her office to ask her to sign for a delivery. And he stopped for a second and was standing there just staring at the painting in a trance . . . Then he turned to us and said, “WOW! September Eleventh! I can see the fireman! Amazing!” and with those words he turned and walked back out .. .. And Sandy jumped up and ran after him and hauled him back in and asked him, “Where is there a fireman? I don’t see a fireman” . . … And he pointed to the center of the painting - near the top- and showed the outline to us both - the image of a little guy facing to the left and with what looked like a hose strapped to his shoulder - and water streaming from the nozzle - and a helmet on his head with a tiny little light -
and all three of us stared at the painting -
Then Sandy and I just looked at each other
And I shrugged my shoulders because this was not the first time this had occurred
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And when I went home that night I took the painting off of the wall where it was hanging, and I put it into a small closet facing the wall and behind a bunch of clothes, because the whole thing was upsetting to me and I couldn’t bare to look at it. And I never showed it again to anyone. And it sits somewhere on the East Coast - I don’t even know where - in some storage unit placed there by someone who was supposed to be holding it for me. It’s one painting I have no strong desire to see again, because it is difficult to look at that painting and feel and know and understand what led to it in the first place. There is suffering in that painting and it is deep and it is painful.
Provenance:
2002: The Tolucan Times, Toluca Lake & Burbank, California
* Original NFS *
