River Dream

24x36”
April 2015
Acrylic
0.75”wrapped canvas

Artist Statement

This painting is based entirely on a dream that I had recently. In the dream, I was doing this particular painting of a small river, with bushes on the far shore, the sun coming at a low angle from the left, and lots of light on the water. There were also a lot of little, round, mossy islands in the water on the near shore, which were of great importance in the dream. Part of what was significant in the dream was the method that I was using to paint – for the water, I was painting with all 5 fingers of both hands, with my fingers spread out fan-like, and my arms moving freely back and forth, side-to-side.

When I awoke from my dream, everything was very vivid in my mind, so I made notes as to the colors, composition, and method with which I was painting in my dream. I made the notes immediately because I find that dreams fade very quickly from the conscious mind, even if they are very vivid when you first awake.

At the first opportunity that I had, I proceeded to paint the painting that I had done in my dream, down to every detail that I could remember (including that it was on a slim canvas), and using the method that I was using in the dream. Here is the result of those efforts.