The aim to re-asseverate the equanimity of the flora models is reverberated in the infant pages of School Sketchbook three (SSB.3), which date from the end of September. The efficacy of the four opening pages (one imagines them realised in cahoots which the above cited Extraneous Drawings) is immediately curtailed on news of her father's death, literally signposted in a dramatic (almost cinematic) fashion by the capture of Naomi's grieving grandmother (incidentally a woman who was nothing but hindrance in my attempts at reuniting the two collections), revealed through the absent half of the flower Naomi was outlining at the time. This image finds its supplementary doppelganger in Extraneous Drawing forty-one, which presses the sullen visage of Naomi's Grandfather against the support bearing an envelope addressed to Naomi's mother, more likely than not offering sentiments of condolence over her and the family's loss (these two parallel copies will later be re-presented co-joined in later Extraneous Drawings). We find both vessels of expression finally divergent in response to trace of external proceedings.
Page 5 of School Sketchbook #3
It was this original image of Naomi's grandmother that served as my primary introduction to the spectacularly gifted young scholar. Paying my final respects to the departed elder Jelish, I happened upon her languid sprawl and vacant face, apparently impercipient of the magnitude of the event at which she was present. Later as she awkwardly balanced on an adjacent tomb, sketching throughout the burial rite, I was at once aware that behind those lucid chestnut eyes lay an unblinking and unflinching opticon. The likeness of her grandmother produced that chilly October Saturday, maw pursed damming the tears that would follow - such a moment of grief - still sends shivers to the base of my vertebrae. It remains to this day and in regard to the days to follow the most efficient rendition of any emotion to any pictorial plane that this elucidator's eyes will ever traverse.
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