Dreams

Q          Your work and images seem very dreamlike or deeply influenced by dreams. Do your pictures come from dreams? Does your painting ever affect your dreams? Do you dream of what you are going to paint [not the same as painting what you dream]? 

A         I do not have a dream and then paint that dream, and so far have never prophetically seen a future painting in a dream. However, when I am working on a picture, it will sometimes wind up in one of my dreams, just like anything from my day might wind up in a dream.

Q          Most of your pictures have a dreamlike quality... Is this because you are actually inspired by real dreams?

A         My work is more the result of day-dreams than the kind I have while sleeping.

Q          Your art often seems to involve dreams. Does the psychology of dreams play a part in your work, the theories of Carl Jung, for example? If so, are these your dreams or reflections of the dreams of others? Where in your mind do the images come from? Are they 'dreamscape' ?

A         Funny you should mention that; I am just now reading Jung's essays on dreams for the first time. He wrote about how the things that appear in dreams are disguised so we can't recognize them, which is an idea that has great appeal for me, and about what he called the collective unconscious, a common inner experience shared by all humans, that he felt had a creative capacity.
           When I make pictures it feels like I'm sticking my hand into my skull, digging around in the gray matter, and dipping into my own personal well of forgotten thoughts and memories. The fact that my work appeals to other people suggests that perhaps I'm also accessing a collected pool of inherited, accumulated, and forgotten material.

Q          Do you feel as if there is a fine line between the dream world and the real world?

A         Although I freely admit to being a day-dreamer, I'm pretty sure I have a firm grip on the difference between the two. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I make no secret out of which I prefer. Loudon Wainwright III said it best in a song, "in dreams I can fly; in dreams I don't die."

Autobiography | Dreams | Surrealism | Symbols | Process
Materials | Subjects | Stuckism | Stories | Style | Inspiration
Time Travel | Influences | Popularity | Other