Another fissure in Ivesmail’s “single lake” theory is prompted by another previously missing group of images that record the grieving attendees of David Jelish’s funeral. These funeral portraits, analogous with Ivesmail’s “supplementary doppelgangers” from the fifth page of School Sketchbook Three and Extraneous Drawing #41, stretching from members of Naomi’s family (Sister Laura [11] and Mother Vanessa [14]) to two unknown faces [12 & 13], fill the void in the succession of Extraneous Drawings that emerges as the “divergent reservoirs” filter into the “single lake”.
Why Ivesmail chose to keep these images from inclusion in the central
collection is open to interpretation. Other than disrupt his elucidation
of the previously cited phenomenon, the drawings reveal little if anything
that interferes with any of Ivesmail’s other conclusions.
The role Ivesmail actually played in Naomi’s life falls under intense
scrutiny through many of the texts the young artist forwards in these
‘new’ works. Through Ivesmail’s writings, one is already
aware of his long-standing friendship with Naomi’s father David
with his friend’s funeral providing the apparent stimulus for Ivesmail’s
interest in Naomi’s consequent output. From the essay he provides
to supplement the youngster’s work, it is evident that Ivesmail
wasted little time in installing himself not only in Naomi’s life
but also in the lives of the rest of the Jelish clan: Ivesmail reports
from first hand on the drawings that the artist completes during a late
October trip to London Zoo, “I perched in silent awe as Naomi evoked
many of the caged beasts, each a reflection of her own mindset.”
This trip, taken not only with Naomi but also with the rest of the Jelish
family, occurred only three weeks after David Jelish’s body was
laid to rest. Ivesmail’s integration into the household seems incorrigible
by statements regarding his knowledge of mother Jelish referring to her
daughter as a “monkey” and the labour shared by Ivesmail and
Vanessa Jelish in removing wallpaper from the Jelish living room, an activity
that provided Naomi with supports for Extraneous Drawings #48-51. This
participation in family life is entirely deficient in the drawings of
the central collection, though features frequently in the newly recovered
corpus.