CHAPTER 13 JOURNAL

Asher is a true adult and artist by the time he is in Europe. His choice to stay and study in Europe is a testament to the need to find new worlds in order to paint. His previous shows had swallowed all he had known and cared about. His need for new and different places. The ironic truth in this search for new things leads him back to the most fundamental and basics in his last two paintings. The unexpectedness of these two paintings is very striking to a reader at first, but with thought there appearance can be traced back several pages. When Asher attempts to recreate the Duomo Pieta there are inconsistencies in the different variations he reproduces. The faces of the figures are the biggest variable as he draws it again and again. The final reproduction is drawn subconsciously on a tablecloth, with his mother's face on the crucifix. These lead up to Asher's final paintings of his family. The paintings are the final culmination of all Asher had truly experienced in his childhood and adulthood. To sum up his life it was the constant torture of his mother by his father and himself that defined his personality. The first painting was a lie; he wanted to show how his mother suffered but did not want to show why. But the lessons he had learned about leaving things incomplete would not allow him to let things be. He could finally understand his mother's desire to finish her brother's work, to try to abolish that feeling of incompleteness. The final result of the crucifixion of his mother at their apartment at the hands of his gift and his fathers travel completed what he felt.