Dream Mirror, 2022

Acrylic and mixed media painting on canvas. Signed, titled and dated on reverse. Josh M. G. Yates’ Dream Mirror is defined by the union of negative and positive space, where dreams and reality collide. The activated white passage consuming the up...

Acrylic and mixed media painting on canvas. Signed, titled and dated on reverse. Josh M. G. Yates’ Dream Mirror is defined by the union of negative and positive space, where dreams and reality collide. The activated white passage consuming the upper half of the painting establishes a deceptive sense of absence. At first glance, the white expanse seems like an empty void compared to its lower butterfly-filled, light blue, black, and green neighbor. However, the upper half of the painting is only an opaque layer over the dreams or memories lost to the unconscious. Dream Mirror can be interpreted in more ways than I have words to describe. However, I think two interpretations stand out. The monochromatic abstraction of the upper portion could be the world of dreams, while the figurative-inflected lower half is reality subtly bleeding into our sleeping excursions. Or, and my favorite, is the painting is entirely about the dream world. The lower portion represents the parts of our dreams we hazily remember, and the upper passage describes the dreams that flee from our memories as we wake.