Recurring Dreams
By William Hernandez

Dreams come in all shapes and sizes. From daydreams to nightmares, images and stories fill our heads and help us solve problems, explore fantasies, and uncover hidden feelings. In this exhibition, the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming and can consciously control the characters and settings. This process of “constructed visualization” has captivated me from a very young age.

In this art show, I focus not only on the active construction of dream images through artwork relationships but also on space and the dominant role it often plays in dreams. Characters in my paintings represent the interconnectedness between identity, social interactions, and creation. Through figurative narrative, I create dream environments where we can meditate on the influence of television and electronic devices in our daily lives.

Like our dreams, the artworks in this exhibition include recurring elements, unusual juxtapositions of familiar things, and narratives that distort time and space. But what does this mean? Just as when we wake up from a dream, we try to analyze the stories or meaningful details we can remember. The dreams recounted in “Recurring Dreams” not only tell us about my dreams, but reveal prevailing attitudes about the figures, spaces, and places within a shared social culture.

About me
Being a Peruvian artist living in America, and now proudly included among the Latino artists in the Pacific Northwest, my art reflects my culture, past and present. I’m an optimistic, happy person, and I want to transmit this feeling of illumination to people who view my work. My life is bright, so my colors need to be bright; they are the result of my passion for expressing the stories and reality of the people where I come from.
I like to reflect on my childhood memories, and of my life in my country before coming here (at age 32). I use the past as a metaphor – as something important that has happened in my life. In some cases, it could be an experience or a moment from a previous day that somehow shaped my future. This cultural interplay is a way for me to translate and narrate my own biographical experiences with humor and melancholy in a playful, dreamlike and inspirational way.

Urban life in Lima, Peru is colorful in many aspects – buildings, people, attitudes…. Oregon is so green. It’s a different type of color than I’m used to, but still an incredible landscape of color. Finding my unique color palette has been a process, and it continues to evolve based on my life experiences.

I would like people who appreciate my work to feel a sense of comfort, joy and wonder. I like to convey a positive feeling that is portrayed in images and stories that the public can recognize and incorporate into their daily life. I hope my art takes on a life of its own and can affect other people’s lives in diverse ways. It’s extraordinary to witness this public-artwork relationship; the connections that arise are limitless, and it is one of my main motivators when presenting my work to people.