I’VE HAD DREAMS ENTIRELY SATURATED IN BLUE. Of navigating vast, undulating fields of blue. In one dream, I found myself in a circular room, where a formless, larger-than-life figure enveloped me in a powerful embrace and told me, “I love you. I accept you.” In the dream I was crying euphorically, and the intense feelings lingered throughout the following day. The closer I got to myself, the more I’d have these experiences.

 

We’re living inside eggshells built by a world that encourages distraction and discourages introspection. The shells hide us from ourselves. To see oneself clearly, one must begin to peel back those layers and metaphorically crack open the shell. Each individual must grapple with who they expect to be without the mirror of the world dictating their reflection.

 

I’ve come to realize that this idea is embodied in my approach to painting. The invisible supports the visible, just like my dream in the circular room, like the work of unpeeling the eggshell.

 

How does this sentiment materialize in my actions? Are my actions and thoughts aligned? I’m painting and contemplating simultaneously; the thinking and the doing are concurrent. The painting is the accumulation of each moment’s reflections, but it is not frozen in time; it is perpetually mutable. Months go by as a painting takes shape. Dehydrated areas may flake away. Skins develop and retain an excess of oils underneath, causing protrusions from the trapped fluid. If my contemplations are the invisible force generating the work, then what is the unseen force that allows me to be? What gives me form as I give form to my ruminations?

 

 

Once, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a gallery of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, I was asked, “What is the most important thing in this room?”

After a moment, I replied, “The air. After the air, then probably the walls.”

 

This led me to the more profound question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. The glass is entirely complete, holding both water and air. Nitrogen, oxygen, and water are interdependent and equally essential to life, a beautiful illustration of the relationship between spirit and matter. Like the air that rests on top of the water, held in union by the glass, an object is married to its negative shape.

The tangible things we perceive are just the surface; love and memory are not only inherent but profoundly intertwined. Love, I’ve come to understand, is the only force that endures—an unbreakable bond that connects us with eternity.

 

Each mark in the work is a thought, and each thought in the work is a mark.

Together they assert my existence, my place in the world.

 

 

 

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Gabriel Mills’s paintings reflect complex textures and imagery, expressing relationships and internal realizations. He holds an MFA from Yale and a BFA from the University of Hartford. His work is featured in notable public and private collections internationally.