dreamtime 2010 & 2011
The term ‘Dreamtime’ comes from the Australian aboriginal concept of the spirit world, where a shaman’s magical visions and mystical creatures abide. I have adopted it to describe my experience of the patterns and visions that manifest while dreaming. The dream experience can place novel thoughts in conjunction with one another. Unlike the experience of waking thought, the combinations of images are undirected, seemingly random and normally out of our control. Our minds seek order and beg for some kind of explanation of the disorder of our dreams. In vivid dreams I can relive past conversations or work on paintings, just as if I were in my studio. If ever there were a connection between Artist and Shaman, I would think it would lie in this Dreamtime dimension.
My Dreamtime paintings explore the activity of thought itself. The experience of trying to comprehend a new concept requires a mental sorting process in which I try to place like things, motions or structures together, by linking the new information to experiences of my past.
The device of visual ‘NOISE’ is employed in all the Dreamtime works. Noise seems to be ever present in my thought process.
Fermi & the Adena Mounds 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Bisphenol A and Two Tetras 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Cafeteria Spin Theory 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Niels & Marie 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Jovian Moment 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Ishango Bone to Golumb Rule 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Jovian Rule 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Orbit Link 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
Stonehenge & Callisto 2010
Acrylic & Collage on Masonite
36” x 24” x 2”
The ground plan of the Fermi particle accelerator is compared to that of a Mound earthwork of Ohio’s ancient Adena culture of 1,000 to 200 BCE.
The triangular structure of the bio-hazard BPA molecule is repeated.
Nuclear Physicist, Richard Feynman said the basis of his ‘Spin Theory of Quantum Electrodynamics’ came from watching the spin and wobble of plates tossed by busboys in the Cal Tech cafeteria.
The discoveries by Marie Curie and Niels Bohr led eventually to the development of the atom bomb. The image of a watch is from one found at Hiroshima, that stopped at the moment of the blast.
The movement of the moons of Jupiter are placed in juxtaposition to images that defined an astronaut’s motion from a 1960 NASA handbook.
Carvings of mathematical sequencing on the African “Ishango bone” from almost 30,000 years ago are compared to the Golumb rule, (0, 1, 4, 6) the longest possible ‘perfect rule’, in that no numbers repeat.
The motions of Jupiter’s moons are matched with the ‘Jovian Resonance’ proposed by Galileo after observing those moons.
A cacophony of multiple forms and flows, orbitals and halos, such as the gulf stream, chemical structures, knots, and Christo’s Biscayne Bay installation.
Could the orbit of Callisto be related to the astronomical alignments suggested in the layout of Stonehenge?
Dream Retold 2 2011
Acrylic on Canvas
44” x 34” x 2 1/2”
Dream Retold 1 2011
Acrylic on Canvas
58” x 43” x 2 1/2”
I sometimes find myself painting or sculpting in my dreams, resolving problems from the studio and occasionally finding new works there. That is what happened in 2011 when for three nights I dreamed of struggling with a composition of triangles, circles and squares. Each time the dreams began with brief sketches on a large canvas, but were worked out to similar, but leading to different conclusions. These were lucid dreams where I was in active control of content, brush and color. This activity repeated all through the night, seeking balance in ever changing relationships and sweeping motions.
Waking exhausted after that third night I decided to just go into the studio and paint, retelling the story of those dream works.