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Archive: Painting Gallery 1993-1999
Painting for me during these years was a place for formal exploration, especially with materials and textures. The images took root in the world of awake consciousness as well as in sleep, or dream consciousness. The paintings served as a sort of visual journal where awake and dream consciousness not only merge, but also where they are equal in that they reveal the "truth" about existence. To me the truths about life are just as real as well as just as mysterious whether one is awake or dreaming. What is learned and experienced in each consciousness differs in the way it is transmitted into the being. In dream-state, for instance, I feel that the being is more relaxed than in the awake state; therefore, a certain wisdom is achieved in dream visions that is not achieved otherwise. In dreams one can achieve a sense of weightlessness, timelessness, as well as experience extraordinary mental landscapes which may be completely irrational in awake mentality. Also, and most importantly, in dreams one may open the gateway of oneself and enter, in a sense, into a more profound understanding of one's hopes, fears, fantasies and nightmares. This is so because one opens the cathedral of the unconscious that lives within. The unconscious is like a garden where each plant has endless potential to reveal inner knowledge about self, past, present and future.
I take dream consciousness very seriously, and I must admit that it is through my relationship with the dream state that I was inspired to use found objects as the support for my work. More specifically speaking, I was motivated to use objects that are visual symbols to the overall themes that I am involved with. I painted on a real bed head-board, for example, because not only did I feel that I was engaging with something real which already exists and which I could re-use, I painted on these objects because they are direct symbols of one of the main arenas where sleep images are born and revealed, the bed. That it is a section, a fragment of an entire bed was important to me because in a way, it parallels the notion that existence is a collection of fragments that occur in the passage of time. Through memory and dreams we can re-visit those fragments of time. As I have mentioned, I considered my paintings to be pages of a continuing visual journal where, upon reflection, I see that they are fragments of passing time captured and explored artistically.
Personally, I feel that painting, actually, art-making in general, is related to the sleep-vision dream state in that each serves as gateway to a freer sense of self. If "truth" is revealed in the dream state, it is such too in dream state, only in a more profound and imaginative way. One reason I painted on doors is for the simple reason that they are used for exiting and entering. Through art and through dreams, one enters a deeper, more celebratory state of being, even if the worlds one enters are dark and foreboding.
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| "Ventanas" | "Deseo Memorias de Miel" | "Adorable Flujo" |
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"Naciendo" | "Oda al Momento" | "Saboreando" |
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"El Resplendor" | "Cuerpos" | "Aqui esta el Dia" |
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"Entre los Pies" | "Auto Retrato" | "Un Buen Beso Lunar" |
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"Confrontacion Interna" | "Agradecimiento Amarillo" | "Un Amanecer Constante" |
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"Borrachas con la Madrugada" | "Open" | "Reentrance" |
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"Homeage to the Skin" | "Jugular, Juggler" | "Nausea" |
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| "In Bliss" | "Crimson" | "Reject Room" |
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| "Ocean Offspring" | "Heirs of Gravity" | "Exile" |
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| "Lit Eve of the Coils" | "Ceremony for the Sea" | "Somnambulist" |
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| "The Big Stairs" | "Old Discoveries" | "Thrillseekers" |
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| "Closet Carnival" | ||