Saint Helices 65 & 66, 24" x 18", oil, acrylic, assemblage on panel, 1995. Artist's collection.

These two versions are the last of the Saint Helices diptychs. I returned to the "absolutely vertical", and "absolutely diagonal" point of departure for the initial disparate compositions. And everything follows as a matter of course in relation to the general process devised in the previous two diptychs--the warm vs. cool glazed color schemes, and the alternating method of mounting the pieces to the picture plane.

There is a small painting called Johns' Dream in the "Dream and Blind Works Gallery" of this museum that inspired the additional forms in these two paintings. Visitors can navigate their way back to that Gallery and get the full story on that painting later, but it is important that I point out something here. The forms in this painting which were taken from Johns' Dream are actually occupying space between the edges associated with their adjacent areas of the composition and the visual plane of the area itself. This represents a disruption in the visual protocol and illusionistic paradigm vital to rendering three-dimensional forms in space. Eureka.