April, 1980  NYC

Ira:          I have been a vegetarian for over a year.  I live in a yoga ashram and meditate several hours a day.  I am a Hin-jew and no longer stuck in my lowest chakra.

     The Iranian hostage crisis is in progress.  We wonder what it would be like to be an unimportant hostage, without a government, or rich relatives to ransom you.  To be a nobody on the edge of nowhere, hanging on to life by a thread.  The horizon is ominous with an approaching storm.  All are naked wearing only the X's of their bonds.  Does the X represent another human termination?  Will death be denied?

     A week after we finished this painting, there was a photo in a newspaper, similar in many ways, except the hostages were dead.

Corliss:          Living on the edge so much of the time as we have done, we are aware of the existence of miracles, and therefore leave room for them in our paintings.

Commentary from exhibition at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California.