“I really wasn’t aware of how flamboyant it [The Rose] had become. I had been so involved in the thing, and suddenly I walked into the studio one day, and the whole thing seemed to have gotten completely out of hand. I felt that it really needed to be pulled back to something more classic in character. That again, became a kind of tearing back of the thing. Every time this happened, it was the work of a sculptor as well as a painter, because of the nature of the material. It actually had to be carved and hacked. It was a very hard physical job.”

Walter Hopps, Oral history interview with Jay DeFeo, June 3, 1975–January 23, 1976, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.