Jay DeFeo, Pend O’Reille No. 2, from the Eternal Triangle series, 1980

Ursula Cipa: With Jay, everything was material.

Narrator: Ursula Cipa.

Ursula Cipa: I mean, the way she saw the world, everything was a possible material used for her process. That was always exciting to be around. She would sometimes add ingredients to the acrylic, to give it texture. For instance, she was once on a diet, so she had a lot of egg shells lying around. [laughs] Her studio was right next door to her kitchen. She lived in an old Victorian cottage. She saw the eggshells, and she started mixing them into her paints.

I remember she would always, to the end of her life— her walls were covered with images that she turned upside down, looked at, reused. If she broke a glass she would keep the shape around, because it just suggested something else to her. I remember once walking into her kitchen. It was just covered with all these plastic bags, and I asked her what she was doing with it. She said, oh, I just love the colors, you know? Everything was material for her. She was constantly looking all of the time.