I own you
2008
acrylic on panel
24 x 16"
61 x 41cm

A Collection of Dreamers

Some of my subjects come straight from my immediate milieu and others I stumbled upon purely by chance. Nevertheless, I ended up with an offbeat array of contemporaries of diverse ethnicities, nationalities and callings.

What unites (and ultimately divides) this colorful, eclectic bunch is that they are all fierce individualists with a firm belief in their own ideals and ambitions. They are, in effect, dreamers, reveling in their own personal self-imagined worlds, far-removed from the prevailing indoctrinated consensus reality.

I devote a series of paintings to each of my subjects. I look beyond their physical characteristics and try to visually interpret their inherent psychological forces and in the end their dreams, or rather the realities of their own invention.

In my collective work, hence, we find parallel realities, side by side, intermixed, counterposed, and all seemingly challenging each other. The viewer too may feel confronted. But no matter how much my figures glare and stare, their eyes are also turned inward, lost in distant reverie.

This collection of dreamers, however infinitesimal, is a meaningful sample of the types of personalities who defy the globalization of the human psyche, who staunchly express their uniqueness, seek their own truths and live by their own, arguably higher, standards.