This is a small section of a new dreamscape that I started while in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It is a two-panel painting (“diptych”), a style I’ve wanted to explore for years now in my oil painting. Hung side-by-side with an inch or two of separation, the two canvases will traverse an expanse of sunlit water as seen through the opening of an arched window. The colors are inspired by the surroundings of the old hacienda-style Mexican ranch where I am fortunate to paint each summer. The blue of the lotuses I’ve seen in my dreams.
This has been a summer rife with violence and collective angst in our country and worldwide. It seemed the perfect time to transpose a dream-like atmosphere of peace and tranquility.
“Always when he, in country heaven,
(whom my heart hears),
Crosses the breast of the praising East, and kneels,
Humble in all his planets,
And weeps on the abasing hill,
Then in the delight and grove of beasts and birds
And the canonized valley
Where the dewfall stars sing grazing still
And the angels whirr like pheasants
Through naves of leaves,
Light and his tears glide down together”
– excerpt from Dylan Thomas’s final poem, “In Country Heaven”
