Dream Journal 2 features a latex cast of my right hand, affixed to the canvas. This piece deals with touch: human contact. In these days of email, instant messaging, blogs, comments, and social media sites, we all have a lot of “Contacts.” But how many do we actually touch?
Touch causes a chemical and an emotional reaction that is essential to our well-being or, you might say, to the ideal calibration of the human “machine.” Babies who are denied loving touch develop a host of psychological disorders, many of which are painfully evident in our culture and society today. Perhaps our entire culture suffers from a lack of touch.
The tactile aspect of the hand also suggests that the dreams not only involve touch but can be touched. You could put your hand to mine and feel my dream, says this piece. Perhaps you and I can even dream it together that way.
The jewelry, buttons, and broken snail shells layered into the canvas have all been touched. They relate to powerful memories of tactile experiences — some sad, but mostly happy in this piece. This is an intense dream, full of touch and contact, physical intimacy and the joy it brings. You wake from it feeling loved, refreshed, at peace, and smiling. You look forward to dreams like this.
Mars Will Send No More 
There’s a lot of depth. I like it!
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Thank you. The greatest challenge here was covering up old layers that seemed perfectly wonderful… To get the complexity of multiple layers that makes things seem alive. Every stage involved destroying something perfectly fine in order to progress, and we suspect this journey happens in life even more often than collage and painting.
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No true art can be made without sadness and loss then. A kernel of truth that makes the whole product shine. Very deep indeed.
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