The Sea

“My father had died and my mother was with me in Spring Lake in a small house. I walked all the way down to the ocean by myself at night, looked at this scene and memorized it, then came home and painted The Sea. But you know why I made it curved instead of that straight horizon of Courbet? Because I thought you saw more this way, in depth. Although I love that perfectly flat horizon, still, I thought this way you were in it, part of it.”
– Alice Neel (P. Hills, Alice Neel, New York, 1983.)