Incision is like the forgotten black sheep of the Jay DeFeo family.

Often overlooked for her infamous younger sister The Rose, I think it’s time to give this piece the credit that it deserves. This painting was made as a precursor to The Rose, and it’s very similar stylistically. Incision consists of 500 pounds of crusty paint and a few strings.

One quality DeFeo lacked was patience. When using oil paint, one must wait for the previous layer to dry before applying another one or else the piece will begin to crack and bubble over time. She couldn’t help herself from painting on wet paint, and now she’s the conservator at SFMOMAs worst nightmare. While restoring it, she claims she even found old cigarette butts in it. Not surprising since DeFeo smoked like a chimney and ultimately died of lung cancer.

DeFeo was either the most massive procrastinator or was just too indecisive to actually finish most of her art. Incision was actually supposed to be a triptych. She envisioned this piece as being a large V extending across all three canvases with a green heart in the middle. Unfortunately, she was not known for executing ideas in a timely manner and ultimately got bored and abandoned the project. The middle panel was lost or destroyed, and the right panel was never finished.

Many people see this work as referencing decaying tissue and the strings as human tendons. This would explain the surgical title. If this is what she was going for, I think Defeo just snagged the award for one of the creepiest paintings to date.