Waking Dreams and Being “in the Zone”

Voice of a Dream. Oil on Canvas. 36x36 inches.

I named my second solo exhibition Waking Dreams, because that’s how I feel when I’m “in the zone” working on an art project.

As artists we need to find ways to access the unconscious. It’s similar to those moments when we are barely awake from dreaming, moments when images and memories float freely through our minds without outside control. As an artist I reach for those uncontrolled and subconscious images and sensations—like being startled awake, still feeling the terror and horror of tumbling down into a vast and deep unknown space, like Alice through the looking glass; or opening my eyes, still feeling the vague euphoria of flying freely above the world. Much of my artwork evolves from accessing these hazy half-remembered feelings.

Throughout most of our busy days we engage in task-related or task-directed thought. We solve problems, commute to work, schedule activities, keep appointments, buy groceries, pay our bills, figure out how to assemble things, read the news and make decisions. But when we let go of those everyday tasks and conscious control of our minds, we open the door to possibilities for spontaneous thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle.”

This is the state of mind I seek when I’m painting. It allows me to reach deeper thoughts, experience freer vision, and create a more spontaneous work.