From time to time, I have a vivid dream, the content of which is art-related. Some of these dreams linger into waking life. I am not sure to what extent my mind is convinced by dream reality. For example, I dreamt the Tennessee State Museum generously afforded me a major retrospective. The timing, however (in the dream) was unfortunate. I was closing my Nashville studio, and moving away from Nashville and Tennessee in a rather bad humor. The causes and circumstances are vague in my memory, but in the dream itself, they were clear. The content of that dream was very detailed. I can still remember many of the pieces that were hung in the museum exhibit. Actually, they were more like bigger versions of the painted wood assemblies I constructed in the early nineties in Santa Fe than anything I created while based in Nashville. The museum show was preceded by a fantastic gallery show, set in a massive art complex that mildly resembled a Second Street mall sprinkled with studios, shops, cafes, offices and “galleries.” Throughout the dream I had interactions with friends, peers and associates. As you can probably tell, the dream-narrative was very complicated and rich. I recollect this dream as a single episode, but perhaps it unfolded over several episodes, in a sequence or as a series. Eventually, the plot led to the museum contacting me to repair and pick up some of the art, after the exhibit closed. The staff were somewhat upset with me, as I had evidently neglected the show, was ambivalent to the honor that it represented, or something of that nature. In the dream, I felt a little bad about that, but not much. What does it mean? Who knows!

A few days ago, I had another alt.art-world dream. The main character not myself was an art dealer who was reminiscent of Linda Durham, whose Santa Fe gallery is a regional gem. I was playing the role of artist/art writer, and I was visiting this dealer-avatar to preview the massive new space she was opening. The thing that drew my attention most was the elaborate wall treatment throughout the gallery. Basically, the walls were painted with very intense colors and abstract forms, in the genre of digital photo stock texture samples. I was a bit surprised, and mentioned it to her, in the form of an inquiry, wondering whether she was concerned at all that these walls might interfere with viewer experience, by distracting from the paintings. She (I wish I could recall her dream-name) waved my question off with an elegant wave of the hand, turn of the wrist and shake of the head and its straight blonde hair. Sure, she said. I couldn’t care less. It’s my gallery and I can paint the walls any way I like. Or something to that effect.

This recent dream - situated in a dream-Santa Fe, or a parallel Southwest-y art town - I’m certain has had many chapters. I can call to mind some of its scenarios, most of which for some reason happen in nighttime. One involved a lovely and petite adobe gallery, the interior of which sparkled like some New Mexico art stores do. The owner was a friend, another lovely art maven, similar to others I have known over the years. Which is not to infer that this dream-gallerist was somehow not specific. Her presence, persona were detailed, very specific, authentic, as might be expected for vivid dreamworlds. We had a conversation (I forget its content), which sparked a search of sorts through the community, which led to subsequent visits to a variety of homes, restaurants, bars and so on. The dream series also included studio locations and art events, story lines, personal relationships both good and bad. Components of the dreaming (e.g., people) are recognizably drawn directly or obliquely from actual life. Other elements are wholesale inventions of the dream machine.

It is hard to estimate how much of my art is interconnected with these art dreams, and to what degree. During the relentless production phase typifying my 30s, I did disclose to some of those who wondered about my problem-solving capacity that I believed that daily sleep of four hours minimum was critically important. Because during that sleep, my mind did computations and calculations, like a computer continuing to run programs while the user is away doing something else.

I have envisioned fully realized and articulated artworks through dreams, although I have not necessarily executed them “IRL”. Partly this is because of my speculation (and others, of course) that the dream and waking worlds coincide, and one doesn’t know for a certainty that one is less “real” than the other is. A dream art may or may not make the same or better sense in material reality. Dream color, a function of dream light and chemistry and physics, is or is not translatable here in the real world. Nonetheless, art does seem able to bridge the separate worlds of dreaming and waking, contingent on the artist, whose inclination is to surf in both oceans, to put it metaphorically. Devoted meditators (David Lynch comes to mind) suggest similar outcomes deriving from their practice. Again, who knows!?

There is the related discourse on the influence of drugs, or the effects of madness, on the artist mind. The question of artistic genius is also related. The commonality is a supposition on the nature of perception, indicative of our general curiosity about vision and its interpretation. The holistic concept for art, that the artistic enterprise is convergent, absorbing stuff from all sorts of human sensation and experience, still must confront the mechanics of seeing, which are more or less scientifically knowable today, and the mechanics of interpretation of the seen thing. The latter is more speculative, hypothetical, even though prodigious investigation has been applied toward our better understanding the process. Art remains a very useful tool in the study of mind, through the lens of imagination, or creativity, as such. But also in the connection between a thing (art, for example) and viewer, which remains a really unique interrelation, one that happens on or intersects many levels of consciousness and experrience.

"Thing #1" Ink on paper 5.5" x 8.5" Strathmore paper 2021 — "Thing #1"
Ink on paper
5.5" x 8.5" Strathmore paper
2021