DREAMING MACHINES ~ Acrylic on gessoed panel 11" x 14", (27.9 cm x 35.6 cm.),Completed May, 2008

The most recent painting in my series of paintings concerning the "reality" of dreams.

I spend a lot of time dreaming. Any time I can, I dream. As a child I was scolded for "dreaming". So, this made me want to dream even more! Most of the time, I prefer my dreams to the waking world. But not the nightmares!

I often think that dreams may be the gateway to another world. Perhaps a parallel world just as important as the waking world which we call "reality"?

When one dies does he go into a dream from which he never awakens? Perhaps dreams foreshadow death? Have we all not thought this? Not a very scientific theory however. The brain activity that goes on during dreaming, ceases all together at death.

On the other hand, if brain activity is electricity, perhaps this activity moves on after the body machine runs down? Is electricity energy? Is energy immortal? Is this electrical energy in us, the current that travels via synapse junctions in the brain from one neuron to the next, the undying energy of a "soul"? … But I digress … I am speaking now of dreams, not souls.

A dream is the only alternative reality that all people visit. From Junkies to Presidents, we all travel to this other world, twisted and strange as it is.

Human beings are indeed "DREAMING MACHINES", (and hence my title for this painting)

My painting shows representations of what it is to dream, and what it is to be in a dream. This is just "remembering" my dreams. Dream remembrance is not at all accurate. Somewhere on the way back from the dream, On the "bridge" from our dream back to reality, we lose most of the details. Like a man trying to carry a big armload of tiny twigs on a windy day, most of them blow away by the time we get back. Trying to recall and paint the remnants excites me. It brings me closer to my dreams. However, it's difficult because almost all my twigs are gone!

Dreaming is seeing, being and existing within, and without, worlds merging known and unknown.

Painting is very much like dreaming. I must seek to find my dreams because they are my models!

Dreaming is feeling and seeing things only possible in dreams. In dreams we experience things which are beyond our waking imaginations.

In dreams we mix fragments from our past with an assortment of possible futures.

In our dreams we stir a "psycho-stew" of things that are, can be, may be, and never will ever be.

In dreams we see our "real' worlds, warped and molded by abstract ideas and notions we never "dreamed" we had.

In dreams there are structures, both logical and ludicrous. Cities that stretch further than the eye can see. Places I've been and never been. Rivers, Lakes and Oceans. Wide open spaces and small dank claustrophobic spaces that can be a prison or an endless maze.

In dreams there be Monsters!

We call all this "The stuff of dreams". Does it come from within us, or somewhere else?

Dreams are both metaphor and analogy ... and neither. Dreams make no sense, and yet can be important revelations!

In this painting, a woman's mind explodes with dreams. Dreams float away like bubbles that escape into a vast and endless expanse. Behind her, nightmares are entombed in an ancient wall of dark fears.

In my dreams I often can not speak, so my mouth is covered. My dream world is endless. It rocks like a cradle on a silky sea, filled with visions of fish. I see my dreams through many eyes, and many lenses, (Like the many lenses I use when I paint.)

We have dreams of sexuality so bizarre they are unspeakable. We all have our secret dreams. Dreams that we will never tell. We will take these dreams with us to that final dream … or that final nothing.

To think that all the people who have ever lived have had hundreds of dreams! Each dream is unique. How many dream worlds have been dreamt of? And how many more dreams shall we have?