HENRY REED, PhD
Making art has always attracted me, if elusively. I recall envying the girls in grade school who could copy the comic book characters so well. I couldn’t draw anything. In college I had special all night drunken sessions where I’d solo dance to music and create wild paintings. In the morning I’d come out and surprise myself by having channeled interesting art from Jim Beam orJack Daniels! As a psychology professor at Princeton, I finally made it to AA and to Jungian analysis. Dreams and altered states of consciousness began to play a role in making art. A gift set of miniature water colors intrigued me but I was aggravated by their unruliness compared to my magic markers. Then I had a dream where my dad points to a painting, saying,“You could paint like that.” Designed like a page from a coloring book, the spaces could be filled with watercolor washes-- in my skill range! It was true.
Too Much Time on my Hands But no Desire to Work
(Original Digital Art)
I had other dreams revealing other watercolor techniques as symbolic gestures. I began to paint water color mandalas as an exercise in quick, spontaneous creation within the boundaries of a type of healing expression.I taught a group of elementary school teachers how to introduce their students to making art from dreams. We had an exhibit of the resulting student work at a local community art center. I taught a group of artists how to innovate methodology from their dreams for another exhibit. They asked me to create paintings from my dreams for a one man show. I did so, but then never painted again for more than 10 years! Digital art freed my spontaneity from the self-consciousness that one-man show created. From November 13, 2004 to November 13, 2011, I published The Daily Mandalas (dailymandala.blogspot.com), a daily expression of more than 2500 original mandalas, either digital or scanned media. I’ve published original digital art daily on Facebook. When I posted on Facebook the recent digital art painting I’m showing here, I remarked, “When I was in my 20s, I would have to get drunk to paint like that!”