One third of our lives is spent sleeping...

...and the world we occupy when we dream is an intensely personal one. 

For the purposes of art, I am sure I delve into them much less than other artists, but the ones I remember have a gravity and reality to them that I never want to forget. Applying them to the waking world, though, is tricky. Applying them to art is something that, if I do it, is not intentional.

I know that as people we want to associate things, place things into a proper context, create patterns, designate significance and importance. This is obviously a very personal matter, and some do it more than others. Even just TALKING about a dream runs the risk of sounding like a complete wacko.

For me, trying to find meaning with every single dream would be an act of madness. I will, though, try to share what dreams seem to have the most power for me, personally, and as an artist, and end this with a particular set of recurring dreams that I do take comfort in. 

Most dreams that leave an impression on me are skewed takes on the real world. The locations these dreams take place in are connected somehow to the real world. That is to say, they occupy a specific place on the map. They may only vaguely resemble their real world counterpart, sometimes not at all. My reasons for being there are usually unknown, nor do they really seem important

This is something strange: These places reappear in other dreams, their strangeness and disassociation to reality intact from previous dreams.......Towns, streets within those towns, roads connecting to other towns, roads going off into the wilderness. Areas outside of town, rural areas. Areas beyond a familiar comfort zone, hinting at destinations. Lots of highways. Lots of curves in the road. Paths, passageways, even rivers or dry riverbeds.

Maybe it's that part of the mind that wants to organize things, but I can piece together the world in my dreams sometimes, like a jigsaw puzzle. Dreams from long ago fit together with a recent dream, because they take place on a highway or a junction or a group of buildings that relate to each other vividly.

Rules of logic, of course, ultimately do not apply...or there IS that thing called dream logic, which has its own set of very ephemeral rules.

Streets can become pathways which can become hallways. I enter houses or rooms and reemerge from them on the other side, and everything taking place has a physicality to it that at times seems utterly real.

People are met, mostly strangers or sometimes someone that is an amalgamate of several people, sometimes someone who in the dream clearly represents somebody (and is forgotten upon waking). 

A city on the coast many miles away is easily traveled to or from in a blink of an eye, through towns that visually do not exist, but again....materially occupy that space.

Quite often,  there is a definite destination, an event, gathering, or happening, that I am going to, and that particular event never happens. Ever. The dream is all about the traveling there.

One thing, though, whether real, fictional, or a combination of the two, these places all hold a magic and power to them that makes me remember them. I may not understand them, I may not HAVE to.

Someone who bought some paintings from me once proceeded to analyze them, (a psychotherapist) saying she saw someone "searching " for something, that there was a deep sense of longing in the paintings. 

Perhaps. If I were to attach these dreams to anything I paint, there does seem to be a sense of searching. For what, I don't know. But one thing I love is the mystery of it all, and that is very definitely something I love, and I think that I do try to depict in the landscapes I paint. 

The paintings that take place in small towns at nighttime, on backstreets or focusing on houses or particular buildings, oftentimes abandoned.... these are the ones that seem to get under my skin the most. 

Perhaps it comes from growing up in a small town, (sometimes on the rural outskirts of it) and then having a sudden upheaval and loss of family members (1970), to setting out on the road and traveling without destination, all within one year. I can't ignore that certain things that have happened have hardwired the way I interpret the world, visually and on some deeper level. That's between me and nobody else, but it's been an interesting thing, making a connection with people over the places in these paintings, and finding that they very much represent something to them as well.  

I'll end this as I mentioned, about one small set of recurring dreams that has taken place over the last couple years, which seem pretty obvious.

The setting is Laguna Beach, or the dream version of it. Streets, backstreets, the canyon road, Pacific Coast Highway, the highway leading out of town up the coast, houses on the cliffs or on the water.....everything is the same, yet different. All the disconnected dreams carry the same set of experiences from the other dreams...or maybe that's my memory trying to organize and categorize it all.  Whatever the actuality, many dreams in the past ten years, since suddenly leaving the gallery/studio behind. There was a lot of unfinished business. For lack of a better word, I just gave up. 

These recurring dreams focus on my old gallery.

A decade later, it's still there. All locked up, still full of stuff, left right where it was when I deserted it. (In reality I moved it all out, but the symbolism is so obvious here)

I unlock the place, and enter. It's been closed up for a decade, musty, dark, things covered in sheets, art supplies exactly where I "left them".  Nobody notices, traffic drives by outside, nobody comes in,  I'm doing this undisturbed and with complete freedom. I start picking things up, uncovering things, dusting things, stacking canvases. There is a canvas on the easel, and little paint and water containers that need cleaning. 

End of dream. Repeat until he gets it.

All I can say is that the feeling of "coming back" was there in those dreams like I've not felt in any other. All that searching, wandering, traveling, then this one simple act of returning and confronting.  So, the act of actually putting an easel on the canvas and picking up a brush since then has felt more like an absolution than pretty much anything else.

So, if I am to place significance on a dream, this would be a good one. 

"Going Home"  24" x 48" , Acrylic on Canvas. Asked to do a painting for my friends Tom and Alastair, this is what I gravitated to. This is from a few years ago, when I was still struggling with if I could ever find true inspiration to paint again.

During that time "out there" it's nice to know that others believed for me, until I could believe again.