The dark panel I painted first, the building falling down.
The light panel next: fire and blood and the bright blue sky...

Letter to Joan Finn, The Montclair Times:

Dear Joan, you asked me to write about my diptych. It's painful to even think about remembering it. I had been watching the coverage on TV all week, non-stop. Hardly sleeping, sirens all day long, up and down Clairmont and Bloomfield Avenues, smokey silence in the sunny mornings, the smell of burning plastic wafting into the bedroom even from twelve miles. Finally I wanted to leave the house, go to my studio. I had been working on two large canvasses, I should try to get back to them. As I began to paint, carving out shapes, drawing with the black paint, trying to work on my cerebral abstractions, I see the buildings tumbling down, avalanches of broken steel and concrete clouds. Every stroke. I tried to avoid it but couldn't. They kept welling up. So I gave in, began to throw paint at the canvas, F*****g bastards ! Goddamn f*****g bastards ! I was screaming inside and out, and crying for the innocents lost, for the city I love, throwing paint:
the building falling down, fire and blood and the bright blue sky...

Drew Knapp
9/1/2002