Blue Twilight, 1996-1997, graphite, watercolor, pastel, conté crayon, and litho crayon, 22 x 30″

Dreams are pure imagination. By transcribing them I attempt to give shape to what never really was. With painting I probe visual experience, uncertain and ephemeral. A favorite book, Le Grande Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier recounts a young man’s search to return to a world he stumbled upon while lost in a wood. Deeply atmospheric passages follow his quest for the unattainable; for what might well have been a dream. This is what the chase of art feels like to me. I see a blue light and seek a path to it. But which blue light? What did I see? I conjure multiple observations; snippets of reality and imagination to link to a phantom past. Such is the setting of my drawing, Blue Twilight (above). My artistic practice is based on longing for a place I haven’t really known.

Study for Blue Twilight, journal entry dated 1 July 1995, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 6 x 4 inches.

Bedside notebook with jotted dream fragments, 2007, page size 5 x 3″

Dreams have been a key component of my journals since the 1980s. These strange narratives fascinate me as I often see my psychological temperature imaged in their symbols. I’ve found ways to cultivate dreams; as I go to sleep I repeat to myself “I am going to remember my dreams.” A notebook beside my bed (above) can hold scribbled fragments when I wake in the night. It’s a bit like fishing. Sometimes the fish come. Other times no. When I wake in the morning I look to see if I can make out my notes. A few words can sometimes bring back a flood of memories and I transfer whatever I remember immediately to my sketchbook/journal to avoid forgetting.  Although my books overflow with dreams I’m convinced what I collect is only an iceberg’s tip.

I’ve always enjoyed drawing in front of works of art. Certainly seeing the artist’s actual creation versus a reproduction has much to do with it. For example, Seurat’s drawings are much looser than the camera translates them and seeing those gestures is vital when making pen and ink sketches like those above. I enjoy testing my ability to distill an image, drawing without looking down at my journal as much as possible. My focus is eye/hand synchrony. Working in a crowded gallery can actually create a useful tension; forcing me to work faster and search for barest essentials. Stepping out of the way of other viewers also forces me to study works from different vantage points, to draw while moving, and work from a subject that can be frequently eclipsed; all useful challenges. I try not to think too much about page layout; thus my series of studies joins a landscape sketch of my own composition (upper left).

Near the end of October 2007 Comet Holmes appeared as a fuzzy patch in the lower left of “K” shaped constellation Perseus. It was not as bright as comets I’ve seen previously; Hale-Bopp or Hyakutake. But I experienced a similar realignment as I strained to see the tiny ephemeral light in the night. I am reminded of Emily Dickenson’s poem Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (216 /1861 version). I imagine comets as the suppliers of organic chemicals that are the building blocks of life; providing a kind of Darwinian resurrection on planets. On another level, Richard Eberhart’s wonderful 1958 poem A Ship Burning and a Comet, All in One Day (not available online, so far) evokes the beauty of these creative and destructive forces we usually view from afar.

My first books were manufactured sketchbooks. Jenny, my wife, did not start making my journals until 1992. The early writing disappoints me. In hindsight I don’t like the poems I wrote and my prose seems very self-conscious as if I knew someone might read it. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that I realized that my dreams were accessible to me and a much more interesting way to log and explore life. The first drawings are of houses, often sketched from Polaroids or pinhole camera photographs I was making at the time. I rarely work from photographs now, prefering direct observation.