Do you paint in your sleep?

I think about art a lot. It might be a bit of an obsession. I’m beginning to think that I have allowed it to replace most of my conscience thinking hours. I’m not sure if this is healthy, but at least I know I don’t have room to obsess over unhealthy ideas. So in a way, painting in my sleep has replaced hypochondria or the need for a perfect home or the worry about what tomorrow might bring. Hmmm...some trade-off there!

I don’t stop at brush to canvas. I think about the business of art. I think about writing about art. I think about all the masters living and past that have brought art into this world. I think about my children’s laughing as big strokes of colors. I think about how old buildings with paint peeling are really just art. I think about memories and ideas and how they relate to art. I think about using something discarded on the side of the road as art...in fact, just yesterday as I was driving home from Baltimore I noticed all the plastic bags stuck in the bare branches of bushes along the median of the highway and thought it was art in the most unexpected form.

I wasn’t born with synesthesia, but I think after years of training my heart and mind I have begun to connect everything back to art. Every memory, every sound, every sunset, every bug that walks the earth...they all become a correlation to the art that’s in continual play in my mind. Sounds become colors and stories become textures. In one way or another everything, absolutely everything, becomes an idea for another work of art, even if I only create it in my head.