Jay DeFeo, The Rose, 1958–1966

Narrator: What’s the longest you’ve ever worked on a painting? Jay DeFeo spent nearly eight years creating The Rose, by adding thick layers of paint and then scraping massive amounts away.

Layer then scrape—over and over! In between she added things from her day-to-day life: a barrette, bottle cap, keys, and wire.

Sometimes the thick layers of paint would shift overnight. When it did, DeFeo carefully carved the paint until it was back the way she wanted it. Sometimes, a week or even a month later, the paint would shift again! But DeFeo never gave up. She worked through her frustration until it looked exactly the way she wanted.

As you can probably imagine—eight years’ worth of paint makes for one heavy painting! It is 11 inches thick in places, and probably weighs about a ton. That's about twenty-seven fifth graders!