My True Love: How Spray Paint and a Dream Rewired My Brain

I’m in my art studio with a bit of a mess around me. I shake a can of red spray paint and hear the tiny metal ball clack the sides of the can. I’m in my element, feeling free and untethered from any worry or fears.

I watch the bright red paint appear like magic in scribbled writing all over my canvas. I start grabbing lace and stencils and watch the patterns emerge from the canvas with contrasting color as I switch from one can to the next.

In just moments, my whole canvas is transformed into a deeply saturated, colorful array of marks and patterns, softly transitioning from one color to the next.

Beneath it all is an octopus basking in a pattern of light that illuminates its colorful skin as if the suckers on its tentacles are a string of lights. I’m enjoying the play of poetic simile between the round shapes of the suckers, the pattern of white dots against the teal skin, and the micro bubbles in the water.

The brief yet exhilarating minutes of expressive spray paint are over, and now I will move on to oil paint, refining and defining form, articulating light with the nuances of value and color shift. Much of the spray paint will be covered over, hidden in the layers beneath, but some of the patterns and marks will show in the final layer and live to speak their mind.

When a can of spray paint is in my hand, there is an uninterrupted flow of expression that effortlessly leaves its mark on the canvas. The art just appears like magic without any of my human cognition. Just pure intuition. I’m a conduit. What I feel is pure liberty.

Where It All Started

My discovery of spray paint began about 20 years ago. I had a dream that a fatherly figure stood behind me while I was seated at a table. His arms wrapped around me as he gently took my hands and began moving them to create art. He showed me how to use cans of spray paint and tape and paper to mask out shapes. Together we created an architectural structure with steps leading up to it—all with spray paint. Then he showed me a stencil of footprints, and we created small footprints that ran throughout the composition.

I was utterly amazed. I had never, ever considered spray paint as a medium or thought to create stencils. Just seeing these structures and forms appear felt like magic. I was entranced by the soft, feathered edges spray paint created while transitioning from one edge to another.

When I woke from the dream, I was incredibly excited and immediately began to search for spray paint. My local art supply stores didn't have any, and online shopping wasn't a thing yet. So I went to Home Depot and bought several cans of spray paint and found stencils with numbers and letters on them.

My first instinct was to create an underpainting of transitions and blocks, then overlap them with chaotic layers of stencils where the numbers and letters became just shapes and marks rather than anything recognizable. I painted a still life of fruit over this background and allowed some of the spray paint to peek through the fruit.

I brought the new pieces to the gallery I was working with in Scottsdale, Arizona, and they began selling these pieces quickly. The collectors liked the convergence of contemporary spray paint and the abstraction it created with a traditional still life of fruit. It was an edgy look that appealed to the second home buyers from Canada.

A few years later, I discovered artist-grade spray paint and a whole spectrum of color. Then Montana and Liquitex began creating water-based indoor spray paint that could be painted over with acrylic paint and not just oil. This was a game changer, because spray paint could be used throughout the process, and not just the one layer before oil paint.

The Dream That Came Before

I’ve thought of my dream over the years and have felt great comfort in knowing that God is with me as I create. I imagine his arms wrapping around me, holding my hands and guiding them through the creative process. And this dream wasn’t random. It rewired my brain from a terrifying recurring dream I had as a child whenever I had a fever.

My dad’s favorite food is steak. We ate steak several times a week growing up, and my dad spoke often about the army of red blood cells that needed building up to fight sickness. Whenever one of us was sick, he would insist on us eating a rare steak. If I felt too weak or incapable of cutting my steak, he would come behind me as I sat at the table and cut my steak for me.

My recurring dream was my dad wrapping his arms around me, cutting my steak in front of me. I would watch the red juice spill out of the meat, creating a pool of pink liquid as he would slide the knife back and forth through the meat.

The fork and knife would create a horrible high-pitched scraping sound against the plate, and the knife would maneuver back and forth. Soon this noise and the motion would start to get faster and faster and more and more chaotic. The fork and knife would scrape the plate erratically, out of control, with a deafening screech like a chalkboard.

I felt trapped and unsafe. What started as a loving gesture of forced meat eating while sick became a prison of blood, knives, steak, and the shards of metal against plate. I wanted to run. This fever dream would repeat all night long until I was exhausted with sweat from terror. The dream stopped repeating by the time I was 16.

Healed and Set Free

I didn't know 20 years ago, when steak was replaced by a canvas, a fork traded for a stencil, and knives for cans of spray paint, that God was unraveling childhood trauma of control and intimidation.

I didn't understand that what was once a threat and a trap became liberty and worry-free peace.

It didn't occur to me that spray paint would become my liberator, setting my voice free to rise up and abound with raw expression. The immediate, bold, direct, and unbridled marks covered the canvas, forever branding it emancipated.

As I stare at my octopus painting and remember the octopus I’ve seen in Greece, I see the men slamming the lifeless body against the rocks to tenderize it. The sound of the slapping echoes throughout the beach. Without will, the octopus is flung again and again against the rocks, then hung along the line to dry out. After weeks, this octopus will be grilled, drowned in oil and lemon, and enjoyed by families.

But my octopus is alive in the vitality of its orange and blue colors. Its arms stretch out towards the light. It is glowing, free, and transcendent. What was once slammed into silence has learned how to glow. What was once held down has learned how to reach toward the light.

My octopus is not food, not flesh, not fear—it is a conduit. And every mark I make is a declaration: I am guided, not gripped. I am free.

What creative medium makes you feel free?

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