her breath smelled
 like summer mornings before church
like garage sales
and the interior of other people's houses
not at all offensive, nor pleasant
as she went on and on reminiscing 
about her own childhood

For the past few months I have been continuing a series that really started back in 2009 with a diptic that I created for a friend.  I continued off and on with the idea until recently when I started using up stretchers that were purchased but never used.  I began by matching stretcher sizes and working with the intention of creating some kind of harmony, some way of overcoming the split down the middle of the picture plane.  Later I started to emphasis the split by juxtaposing different kinds of space.  Some of these paintings were created with the two panels together, some when they were separated from each other.  Finally some of the diptics split apart because I couldn't stop working on the sides independently even though they were stuck together.  There is one painting that is not a diptic but is rather 4 canvases constructed as one.  That painting is not photographed and will be added later.  

This photo shows one of the final paintings framed and hung.  (click the image to see a larger picture).  To the right is an abstract work created in Yunnan Province, also an important part of this series.