Two Adirondack Rocking Chairs

“At a secondhand furniture store in East Hampton, not far from the train tracks, de Kooning noticed two large wooden rocking chairs placed out front. They came, he was told by the woman at the store, from an old resort hotel in the Adirondacks. de Kooning asked her how much one chair cost. She said $25. "How much for both?" he asked, probing for a deal. She said $50. de Kooning loved her deadpan response and bought both. At the studio he positioned the rockers side by side and facing the easel, which was about fifty feet down an alley created by painting tables. As he rocked, the rocking itself evoked many things: nervous energy, old age, the cadence of the sea. Over the years, friends would join de Kooning in the chairs, and they would rock as they talked, all the while facing the pictures down the alley. Their talk about art mattered to him. But not as much as the solitary stare. Day after day, until the end of his life, de Kooning would sit in his rocker, staring down the alley at the painting developing on his easel.”

— from deKooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens & Annalen Swan