Notes From the Studio

I've been moving house over the last week, so my studio time has been nil.

Today, though, will be a studio day.

I'm working on the drawing for a new painting in an area I haven't explored for a while: Images from dreams. The last time I worked with dream imagery was in the first decade of the century, mostly while I was in graduate school. That itself was a refrain to a group of work centered upon a character known (in English) as Fat Man. His actual name is written in a language that doesn't exist that used to be spoken in the dreams in which he would appear. I'm relating these facts for no particular reason, since the new works have nothing to do with Fat Man whatsoever. The point was to say that I haven't wandered in those woods in ten years or so.

The first image in the new group of work is an attempt to capture a vivid, almost lucid dream in which I was a co-pilot in the mind of a (woman?) who was herself a kind of hybrid creature who lived in trees. She had a thin fur, like the coat of a deer, and she would lay at night upon tops of trees, dense like heads of broccoli. In the cool of the night, she would lie still, feeling the cool breeze that flowed constantly. The breeze swayed the trees and she would roll casually in semi-sleep toward the edges of the treetop, and it was somehow left to me to alert her mind to the need to avoid rolling off the edge.

Most of the dream was just looking out through this creature's eyes and taking in the vast primordial forest stretching for miles, feeling the wind, experiencing a deep tranquility. Whenever I would begin to feel total bliss, she'd start rolling again and I'd be back to alarm mode.

I have no firm ideas on how to capture the sensations. But so far, the painting will be a lot of green with a naked lady in it.