Lucid Dreaming

ack Wright’s studio in the hills of northern California’s Marin County had a such a beautiful view that he had to slather a window with white paint to block the distraction. That’s because Wright was painting not the outer but the inner world, a visionary space suffused with a light that shone from the depths of the unconscious mind. Wright had lucid dreams—an unusual state in which one becomes aware of dreaming without waking up—in which, he said, “color is more brilliant, and vision much more acute.” Wright’s dream imagery, which he used in his work, wasn’t the phantasmagoria of Surrealism but raw material for intricate, meditative abstract painting. In a six-decade-long career, he developed a method of painting in dots and small lines in a way that conveys a sense of color as energy and vibration, with an almost audible quality. Wright was blessed with inherited wealth, which enabled him to pursue