Moving out of Elizabeth Street was a Herculean task: all of dad’s work had to be catalogued, wrapped, and stored. We preserved his worktables to the best of our ability, installing them in our basement in varying states of wholeness. We kept his supplies and his tools—the ecosystem for the artwork you see in front of you. There was a portion of the basement on Elizabeth Street that I have the least memories of, mostly because I hardly had any reason to go in. I never sifted through the artwork that was stored there, and so when I saw Cat Peering Through the Door, I couldn’t believe that it was a work of Dad’s and also that it had been absent from my life for so long.

I loved the painting when I saw it, and I insisted that to make up for lost time, I had to live with it for a while. Situated between two defunct gas lights and right above my desk, it became the perfect adornment to my house that was already crowded with cat faces (including two other of dad’s paintings).

Having paused for a decade between starting and finishing, I wondered at which point dad ended on: the pointillism or the paint strokes. It’s a funny halfway point between his two styles, and I’m curious as to what the 1979 concept was. When I finally got my own cat in order to match the heavily feline-influenced apartment, he would often peer from behind the curtain and mimic the painting’s expression of pointed, judgmental curiosity.

This piece is a celebration of the ability to still be surprised and delighted, even after I thought I knew most of Dad’s work like the back of my hand. I wish I could capture the unwrapping of it and feeling something like an adrenaline surge, like discovering a new kind of species. There is something about the peering cat that managed to keep me company through some of my most alone moments, like the perfect standoffish companion.

- Misa Kobayashi