The Morpheus Portfolios

Mythmaker (above) pictures a !Kung San youth from the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. The young people there, adamantly reject their culture and traditions in favor of something unknowable. A world different from that of their ancestors calls them. We've all at one time or another rejected the ways of the past in favor of our own vision of the future. "Mythmaker" represents the co-creator within each of us, capable of dreaming a new world into being.

Many years ago, I prayed to my Grandfather, artist Paul Travis, for creative guidance. A short time later, I came upon one of his works I had never before seen. When I held the painting in front of me to admire it, "Congo Women, 1931" seemed to jump toward me in stages until I felt it actually pushing me back. A few weeks later, I experienced a series of lucid dreams over three consecutive nights that continue to inform and inspire my work.

In the first of those dreams; I saw the Earth as a dynamic, pulsating orb, vibrantly alive and breathing rhythmically from pores that covered its surface. Then, I stood in a field, the ground heaved, then rushed past me. It gathered strength and momentum as it raced and poured itself over a cliff. A valley spilled from the rim as mountains fled and howled toward the sky, their peaks thinning and contracting as they soared until they tore away and recast themselves as clouds against a clear sky.

In the dreaming on the second night, cloud vapors, that were the mountains, gathered from across the sky. They condensed and rained a different landscape onto the Earth. From their bounty grew desert plants.
These plants elongated, then thinned as they too reached toward the open sky, detaching their tips to form the clouds. The ground heaved and rolled, carrying with it the cactus and all things alive. Over and over, the landscape pulsed and writhed with the forces of creation.

On the third night, the land exhaled, carving a new valley into being from its' breath. Mountains again broke the surface. Their peaks thinned and tore away, gathering into a mass of rain clouds. As the clouds let go their weight, the undulating and swirling ground ran wild with plants and every manner of living thing and brought with it human beings to the Earth.

Figures appeared, long and elegantly woven into the composition of the animated landscape. The figures contracted and extended with the land around them, announcing human participation in the intimate dances of creation. I awoke and realized my grandfather, like Morpheus the Roman God of dreams, had sent me this series of vivid images. Inspired, I searched for ways to transfer the images from the dream sequence to photographic paper.




			Many years ago, I prayed to my Grandfather, artist Paul Travis, for creative guidance. A short time later, I came upon one of his works I had never before seen. When I held the painting in front of me to admire it, "Congo Women, 1931" seemed to jump toward me in stages until I felt it actually pushing me back. A few weeks later, I experienced a series of lucid dreams over three consecutive nights that continue to inform and inspire my work.
		In the first of those dreams; I saw the Earth as a dynamic, pulsating orb, vibrantly alive and breathing rhythmically from pores that covered its surface. Then, I stood in a field, the ground heaved, then rushed past me. It gathered strength and momentum as it raced and poured itself over a cliff. A valley spilled from the rim as mountains fled and howled toward the sky, their peaks thinning and contracting as they soared until they tore away and recast themselves as clouds against a clear sky.

		In the dreaming on the second night, cloud vapors, that were the mountains, gathered from across the sky. They condensed and rained a different landscape onto the Earth. From their bounty grew desert plants. These plants elongated, then thinned as they too reached toward the open sky, detaching their tips to form the clouds. The ground heaved and rolled, carrying with it the cactus and all things alive. Over and over, the landscape pulsed and writhed with the forces of creation.
		On the third night, the land exhaled, carving a new valley into being from its' breath. Mountains again broke the surface. Their peaks thinned and tore away, gathering into a mass of rain clouds. As the clouds let go their weight, the undulating and swirling ground ran wild with plants and every manner of living thing and brought with it human beings to the Earth.

		Figures appeared, long and elegantly woven into the composition of the animated landscape. The figures contracted and extended with the land around them, announcing human participation in the intimate dances of creation. I awoke and realized my grandfather, like Morpheus the Roman God of dreams, had sent me this series of vivid images. Inspired, I searched for ways to transfer the images from the dream sequence to photographic paper.