Provenance and Sources

The design comes from passages in a small design sketch (8.5x10 in, below left) made by the artist c. 1976. The sketch was a 6-piece collage made from fragments of smaller sketches. It has been a source for several pieces. At the time the sketch was made the artist had been strongly influenced by the form/feel of Mayan art and architecture, through his brother Douglas, who had traveled in the Mayan region of southern Mexico in the early 1960s. The image in lower left became the basis for Twins.
The title comes from the Popol Vuh ("Book of the People"), a recounting of the Mayan creation myths, in which the legend of the “Hero twins”, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, and their twin successors is prominent.
”When I started this piece (December 2021), I had not chosen the twins as subject or inspiration. The selection of the title came late in the process as it occurred to me that the central image resembled Mitosis or cell division and at this point, I remembered legend of the hero twins.  I had read Dennis Tedlock’s translation of the Popol Vuh a few years earlier.
There was an additional impetus to the title in that my brother Douglas was a twin to my other brother Richard.  When he was in the jungle of the Mayan region, Douglas met some of the Lacadon Maya who were impressed by the fact that he had a twin.

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