I’m not a pet person. The emotional toll of the care of a dependent life form is more than I can bear. I’ve had pets, and lovingly cared for them and the pets of others, thereby I speak from experience. I recognize the value of their unconditional, or conditional in the case of cats, love. I harbor no animosity to pets or their owners, it’s just not for me … for now.

The vision of Emotional Security came in a dream, a rarity as most images for my work dance around me in daylight hallucinations. In it, humans wore strands of docile kittens and puppies as boas. They draped across dress necklines and hung from the shoulders of trench coats like fashion accessories. I wondered at the seeming normality of the humans’ demeanor, thinking that it must certainly be uncomfortable for the furry little guys. Then, in an instant that only dreams have, I was wearing an orange tabby kitten-boa and looking down at a grown cat in my arms. My horror in finding myself participating in what appeared to be a narcissistic ritual of animal cruelty was further heightened when the tabby in my arms transformed into a giant turquoise amphibian. “Oh god! How will it breathe?”

It was a pernicious dream whose imagery and associated emotions carried into my waking state. I was zombified in the days that followed as my unconscious mind analyzed the vision’s relevance to my life. It would be simple to interpret the dream as a reflection of my thoughts about the responsibility of pets. However, believing that all life events contain a deeper significance through which we can better understand ourselves, I won’t accept such a superficial interpretation.

If I were a film maker, I’d have captured all the nuances of this dream in motion: the subtle expressions of my comforted companions; the clothes I wore; the prescient tabby to amphibian transformation. I know that those subtleties, and others that I won’t share, would be key to an interpretation of this dream. I am, however, a contemporary iconographer, and as such, have distilled this complex story into a succinct, impactful, visual.

As for its title, well … that’s in its story which you can find HERE.