study · oil on linen · 1907 · h. veller
a study. veller made dozens of them. she liked curtains because they hid things, she said, and so were already half-painting. a sliver of pale something behind the folds — a window, perhaps; perhaps another curtain behind this one — was added on a later afternoon, in light not matching the first.
hung in the study because it was the wrong size for every other room. visitors who have spent a long evening alone in this house sometimes mistake the painted curtain for a real one and try to part it. it is polite enough not to mind.
field-note one of the folds — the third from the left — is painted slightly out of register, as if veller meant a draft was passing through.