Robert Craig Bunch has interviewed sixty current Texas artists, focusing on painters, printmakers, sculptors, and others whose work, broadly speaking, is inspired by dreams, visions, myths, and imagined worlds. Working in the tradition of predecessors such as Bror Utter, Ben Culwell, Maudee Carron, Kelly Fearing, Jim Harter, Valton Tyler, Harry Geffert, and even more distant antecedents such as Hieronymus Bosch, Hildegard of Bingen, and the prehistoric rock artists of the Lower Pecos, these artists are united by the common theme of taking inspiration from an “inner landscape” that includes elements of the fantastic, the mystical, and the surreal. In his introduction to the interviews, Bunch observes, “Art has many purposes. Among the most ancient and persistent have been the depiction of worlds beyond what is perceived in common—mythical pasts and imagined futures; realms supernatural, magical, and fantastic; and interior worlds of dreams, visions, hallucinations, and unfettered imagination.” Through sensitive examination of these artists and their approach to these works, he affords readers a fresh perspective on the creative process, especially its roots in the subconscious and the human fascination with dreams and altered modes of awareness. Ranging from discussions of filmmaker Richard Linklater to conversations with artist and educator Floyd Newsum while also incorporating less familiar artists such as Houston’s Fariba Abedin and El Paso’s Ho Baron, this collection of interviews with working Texas artists includes a representative image, chosen by each interviewee as a representation of their work. The Art of Dreams, Visions, Other Worlds: Interviews with Texas Artists promises to expand readers’ concepts of the boundaries currently being explored by Texas artists.
