Perhaps, just maybe, the one thing I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty today is: “Reality is Individual”.  I no longer look around and think that I see my surroundings the same way everyone else sees them and especially that we feel the same way about them.  I also recognize that I see and feel about them differently from day to day. So not only is my reality different from the others around me; but, minute by minute, it is different for me myself.

I can accept that my reality is always changing.  For instance, at 7:00 a.m. this morning the sky around me was a bright hazy peachy-apricot color…..luminescent.  Twenty minutes later, clouds had accumulated so thickly that the sky was dark, grey and threatening.  Obvious, right?

But, what about the sunny day that I see as cheerful and then minutes later view the same bright blue sky as boring, or even worse, depressing? That had nothing to do with the sunshine or sky and everything to do with how I felt.  How I felt changed my perception, my reality.

Okay, this is the thought I am trying to let crystallize.  My beliefs are changing, evolving.  As they change, my reality changes. And….. I am beginning to recognize that how I feel means everything to me.   As my feelings change, everything about my reality changes.  I am causing these changes by being aware of my feelings and caring about feeling good, and feeling better, and even feeling great.

My mind-blowing conclusion is that my reality coalesces around me based upon my perception.  I love that word:  coalesce.  I love the images and feelings I have as I just even think the word.  As all of the relationships and things I want swirl around me, and congeal, coalesce, they become my reality.  How does this happen?  I have no idea.  I only know that it does.  I witness it happening every day.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying the paintings of surrealists of the late 1800’s, early 1900’s.  I’m enjoying reading their biographies and seeing how their paths crossed with each other and the intellectuals of their time.  I feel them speaking directly to me as I patch together  their observances and quotes.

Salvadore Dali said, “One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.”  When he used the word “officially”, he couldn’t have meant world-wide…..could he?  Because reality is individual and no two humans have the same reality.  It is inconceivable to me that a large group of people could agree on such a thing.   We are all in such different cultural, social, political, economic and physical circumstances.

Dali’s friend, Rene Magritte, is quoted:   “If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”  Waking life is what we realize as our reality, our conscious life.  The dream, our subconscious.  We are riding on a constantly twisting ribbon of dreams, imagination, subconscious and conscious flow.  We are carried along, if we allow it, to greater creativity and satisfaction.

Another of their buddies, Pablo Picasso, said, “Everything you can imagine is real.”  I agree.  Focus on what you imagine and it will expand until others can see it is real also.  That’s what reality is.

These surrealist artists allowed their beliefs about their dreams and subconscious minds to flood onto their paintings, untamed, in order to present a perception of reality that would cause the viewer to question his own perception and even the perception of the whole culture in which he lived.

I want those who view my paintings to question my inspiration, my intention, my sanity…..it doesn’t really matter…..just question.