paintings from dreams

Sometimes you have a dream that rolls across your brain leaving a wake of rearranged landscape. And sometimes, decades later, that path is still there, running clear and wide through the jungle. I have quite a lot of those dreams, but the catspider dream is probably the queen. It has inspired two large oil paintings and many paper paintings. Recently (in the last several years) I took that path and charmed it around a narrative beyond its own. At first I thought it would be some kind of illustrated book or comic and started in watercolor. But after two watercolors I realized that it really wanted the depth and color of oil. So the first one came out as you see with the curled woman in the boat pierced by swords that flees with the current. The catspiders, now multiplied from their original single character, and colored in the hues of the other parts of my brain, watch from the cliffs. Thus the title is: What Shape What Place; a double quiery about the state of self (in a boat pierce by swords fleeing with the current) and the state of ones animus or dream angel(s).