The most ambitious painting is one I have been trying to complete for 10 years now of my three god-daughters, Jamie, Rylee, and Kasey Boyle, who happen to be triplets. We share a last name and family history rooted in Taiwan. Their baba has been my good friend since high school. I have started so many carvings of them only to come back to the work to find it so hardened I couldn't finish. In Chiang Mai, the roof of my water pump house is stacked with unfinished triplet carvings now hard as rock. But I am determined to see this one through. The delivery of this picture is now a standing joke between us.
The studio below is not mine. It is in Dong Guan China, an area I go for work and not a place one ever expects to see pockets of beauty. But this studio is in a refurbished and preserved old village and sitting at the calligrapher's table last month, made me realize how my arms and hands ached to hold a brush.
I also got to visit my brother YS Lin's ancestral home in southern Taiwan...in Wu Feng, not to be confused with Wu Fung. He took the photo of me in the doorway of his house.