Drying out

 It is hard for me to believe that it has been six months since I posted on Wu Fung Road and  even harder to admit that in as much time I have not worked on a single painting.  In the past six months I have only been home  a total of 21 nights. I have never been busier or traveled more in my whole life!  But finally,  four flawless sunny days in a row to paint.  I have 11 boards drying in the sun. I have to carve my paintings first in order to paint them and to carve, I need DRY HOT SUN!

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.