I’m reaching into a cookie jar. Like a child, I’m lifting myself up on my tippy toes which are turning white from the weighted grip they have on the ground. My long body reaches high. My arm is stretching up, and my hand hangs from my bent wrist as I feel around inside a colorful, fluffy cloud. I’m feeling for the sweet treat I know is inside. I know it’s there, even though I can’t see it or even describe the way it looks, but I’ll know when I’ve found it, just as soon as I can feel it. When I feel it, I’ll know.

This whimsical imagery describes a dreamlike vision I recently had. It graciously provided me with a narrative for the aspect of spirituality that’s embedded within my recent artwork. This dream embodied what I’ve been doing lately; reaching for something unseen, only felt.

This is not the first time I’ve found myself comparing my art and spirituality to something sweet or thirst quenching. These colored clouds I have been painting are deeply satisfying to create, like how it feels to enjoy a refreshing cold beverage, but then again, the paintings themselves are rich and dense like chocolate cake. And, then, sometimes the obscure colors remind me of sugary crystals, when you can’t quite name the color. It’s more like looking at a prism— all the colors at once.

I’m playing with the light in these cloud forms, choosing the placement for the light and how it enters the cloud and at what angle. Some clouds have light filtering throughout their form while others only get a perimeter outline of light; a silver lining. Some clouds absorb a warm tone of light like the clouds on the opposite end of the sky as the setting sun. I’m also considering the weight of water in each form, and how it hangs in the space. The way each cloud wears its water will effect how the light gets through it. Does that begin to sound representational? Because it does to me! While I’m doing this painting, I’m also reflecting on how we wear our “water”, our pain, and how the light is coming through us. If you were a cloud, would you be infiltrated with light? Or would you have a silver outline?…densely blocking the light so that it can only grace the edges? Would you be a pink cloud who keeps a jolly disposition but, also, a safe distance from the sun? Maybe you’re a lofty cloud with no fear of heights, soaring for the vast space and the light that waits there? These paintings have all of these clouds. And though there are significantly dark colors in this palette, the dark is not a subject on its own; the presence of darkness is always there, hanging in the backdrop. The shadows in the clouds are due the weight of the water. The darkness is not what is most effective about this art, it’s the light and the water, and how the slightest bit of light is all it takes to contrast the darkness.

A low key palette leaves me with lots of power in the lightest colors with which I paint. As the darkest areas take on even darker glazes, the lightest areas suddenly spark, even when they weren’t turned up bright to start with. The same way the darkest days of our lives make the slightest sliver of hopeful light all the more effective and noticeable. This makes a point to remind me that it is not the darkness that makes us who we are, we all encounter dark days, but rather, it is the light and how we allow it to infiltrate. The light allows us to encounter life in color.

Even as this work contrasts my prior art, it is no less “bright” than my vibrant and abstract color-on-white paintings of the past. There is still a vivid take away here. I can still sense something youthful and hopeful happening. There is still something childlike in these weighty works. You know, as children, we were set up to be afraid of the dark…movies and tv, books and ghost stories. Cue the voice-over: “The darkness contains something you can’t see and therefore you shall be afraid of it.”. These paintings contain something I’ve never seen—they have me craving something I have never had a taste of before. However, I am not afraid of what the dark visions have to say. I’m intrigued. They have me wandering around in a midnight dream that is taller and, at the same time, deeper than anything I have ever known, but I am not afraid of its darkness.

The dark isn’t as easy to paint as the white was. The white came from a can. But, I can’t paint these paintings from a single tube of paint, from a single color. I can’t whip them out in an afternoon. These take days…weeks. In the same way, I couldn’t have painted this art two years ago; it took the experience of a few hard seasons; it took layers of life to get to this particular color. It took countless times of choosing faith, and waiting to see what consequentially happened next. This color does not come out of the tube. This color took years to form, layer by trusted layer.

Spirituality happens similarly. We develop a complex awareness of our existence over time. It doesn’t come straight out of the tube. It can’t be learned in a sitting or even from going to church every Sunday. A deep sense of spirituality comes in layers of time spent living life through faith; in making choices based on faith, not fear. And the more we allow these layers of choices to build, the more abundant and rich the color of life becomes.

I could not have dreamt my dream of reaching into a cloud of “cookies” two years ago. I didn’t even know how to paint a cloud yet. I had not begun to look up yet, at least not like that. I hadn’t experienced the indescribable color of God, yet. Nor, did I know how it feels when His Light reaches down to warm my cold, wet skin. But, I do now. And now I know (and trust!) that the act of painting takes me someplace I can’t take myself. I am allowed to collide into a dream like sense of knowing. I get to drift off to someplace else. The “Dream Catching” series looks like a place we would sink into in the middle of the night. It feels like the scenery of a distant place; somewhere unreachable, yet, at the same time, it’s unquestionably familiar. The sense of familiarity isn’t quite like the dark night, nor is it the same kind of shadows we find in a storm. It’s as if this art is simply pointing to the light; the light that defines the indefinite dark.

What I know, after my most recent layers of life, is that I am a dream catcher. I sense light in obscure ideas, in dreamy visions. I permit myself to wander deep into their fantasy before coming back “down-to-earth” with something physical. I turn a dream of the light into a reality— something imagined becomes a thing to look directly at and ponder over. I believe that these caught and painted dreams take to the earth to fill voids in certain souls, to fill empty, hungry bellies, and some of these empty bellies don’t even hear the growl of their longing. They may not have even known they were looking for something until they felt it. There have been many works of art— sung songs and written books— that have filled a void when I was hungry. While we— the artists, poets, musicians and creatives of all kinds— are the dream catchers, we are not the dream makers. I am not the creator of my dream, just the one who witnessed it, who trusted it. I’m just another fisherman bringing home her lucky catch for which the whole village may benefit.

I dreamt I was reaching into the cookie jar of the sky; the sugary colored clouds that I have been painting. I was reaching so intently for something I did not even know how to visualize, but I knew I’d know when I felt it. Like a child reaching onto the counter, a little hand patting around blindly for the cookie he knows is there, but he can’t actually see with his eyes. Even as my feet are planted in the imperfect dirt of earth, I’m’a be reaching for the light. I love the hope of reaching something higher, of —at the very least—trying to grasp at something I’m not yet permitted to see; something sweet and comforting. Though it is beyond my reach, the attempt to reach it is too irresistible.

Like a fisherman heading out of harbor with faith in an ocean he can’t fully comprehend; like a child reaching onto the unreachable counter, I’ll venture into the artistic realm of fantasy in order to catch something wild and unseen. I’ll trek into the wilderness of wonder in hopes of capturing something filling, something restorative, something that is as ethereal as it is real. Something that satisfies our hungers for hope. I’ll keep reaching into my dreams to deliver art that feeds our weary souls and reminds us to look beyond the fear of uncertainty. Reach, even when you aren’t sure of what you’re reaching for. Sometimes the reach is all we can choose, it’s the only thing left to do. Though we can’t see what comes next, let us reach for it anyway.