In the early 2000s, lacking inspiration to kickstart my painting journey, I began having dreams of paintings I had done—complete with titles. I took advantage of this opportunity to catalog the ideas coming from my subconscious and started a visual dream journal.

I’ve been a dream fanatic since childhood and have kept dream journals for many years, but this was the first time paintings appeared. Off and on over the next several years, I had more painting dreams and documented them with the intention of one day bringing them to life. That day is here, twenty-five years later.

Within my Dream series are two sub-series: one features the dreamed paintings; the other presents scenes taken directly from my dreams. Some of these scenes contain several recurring themes. Dreams are always elusive, and I find it a satisfying challenge to pull something from the subconscious to the surface.

The proportion of facial features that align with the Golden Ratio (Phi ≈ 1.618) is often associated with beauty. Clear skin and youthfulness—indicators of good health and reproductive potential. Bilateral body symmetry: a well-proportioned physique suggesting optimal genetic development.

But that’s just the surface. What, beyond that, is beauty?

This series explores questions about what makes a woman beautiful. On the surface, yes, there’s symmetry—but beyond that: is it quiet stoicism? Vibrant engagement? What about the expectations and cultural lenses that shape our views? What’s different? What’s the same?

At a basic level, women—no matter their region of the world—are connected by shared traditions of youth, womanhood, marriage, motherhood, aging, and the acquisition of wisdom. Women are nurturers, caregivers, supporters, pillars. 
 But what happens when they’re put on pedestals, viewed as objects, or controlled?

With this series, I wanted to showcase symmetrical beauty but introduce a forced tension: breaking the image with interruptions of inversion. For me, these inverted blocks represent inward reflection, as well as the building blocks of experience and ancestry.

Note: I built my reference images in Photoshop using an invert filter, which reverses the values in an image or selection, creating a negative effect. You can take a photo of my paintings and invert the image back to see the negative portions switch to positive.