Dreams and Painting - July 2026

A year ago a friend suggested I start writing down my dreams at night. I had told them about a reoccurring dream where I couldn’t remember my high school locker combination or my class schedule, so I would just keep wandering the halls in perpetuity. A dream like this is a common dream that a Jungian would interpret as my psyche trying to tell me to pay attention to something.
So I began writing down my dreams and not only did my psyche indeed have a lot to tell me but the practice of writing down my dreams has had an impact on the way I approach making paintings.
I realized that I was focusing too much of my energy on thinking and needed to be less deterministic in my life and embrace ambiguity. working toward this I found that my painting practice was changing. Now when I begin a painting I do less planning and thinking in my mind about what I want it to be like and I allow unexpected colors and forms to develop. I want to be surprised at what develops on the surface of the canvas which seems to have a connection to my dreams along with images, objects, birds, and the weather which I expereince while awake.
Many of my recent paintings are of the dusk or the night when the full moon is in the sky; a mysterious beacon whose orbit boggles my mind. The image of a pond came from finding a small unexpected pond in a field near Point Reyes Station in California, in the early morning. Mist was rising from the pond disguising a pair of Red Ducks who had made the pond their home. It was a magical moment that I carried with me and which now plays an important compositional and mystical role in the paintings; a grounded, earthly counterpart to the round globe of light in the distant sky.
I still catch myself wanting to know what the dark, the moon, the pond, the flowing colors and shapes mean; to devise some smart explanation for why I have painted the painting the way it is. Then I remember I don’t have to do that.

Richard Kooyman July 2026