I have a new painting. Like most of my paintings, it deals with opposites- this time, dreams versus reality. Also like most of my paintings, its theme was not planned but rather developed over time as my thoughts slowly seeped themselves onto the canvas. In other words, I have been working over this relatively small canvas for about a month for little tiny spurts at a time, every time I felt sure of where to take it next. I like working this way because it does allow me to develop a theme over time, and the results are typically solid.

I am intrigued by the theme I have hit upon in this painting. I understand its development at this time in my life because I am of an age where I have developed a memory bank of major past dreams and thoughts to compare to my present reality and wide-open future. However, I find it especially intriguing because dreams have recently taken a center stage nationally with Barack Obama’s election. Here is a prime example where we will see how the dreams of a campaign, dreams a whole nation rallied around, take shape in reality.

Perhaps most intriguing of all, though, is the coincidence of my painting and consequent intellectual dwelling upon the difference of dreams and reality with the death of Jorn Utzon, the visionary behind the Sydney Opera House. Here is a man who won the Pritzker Prize, the nobel prize of architecture, for a body of impressive work, but will have his legacy shaped by the creation of one building- or rather, the legendary fiasco surrounding its construction.

Utzon won the competition for the Sydney Opera House with what can best be described as a “napkin sketch”- a simple vision set forth in a quick sketch. His vision was bold and beautiful enough to win the unknown architect an international-level competition, beating out 800 other entries, but not calculated to the level needed to rescue itself from the onslaught of very real engineering and construction limitations.

Utzon’s project spent years in development as he and his engineers tried to figure out a way to build the flying concrete shells of the vision, spectacularly burning through money and time in the pursuit of fusing reality and Utzon’s dream without compromise. In the end, Utzon completed only the concrete shells of the exterior before he and the Australian government that hired him parted ways. The interiors were finished by another architect, and were never to the vision of the original sketches. Utzon himself never set foot on Australian soil again, never reconciling the fiasco. In the 50 years since Utzon won the architectural competition, the world has not stopped talking about the project; but mostly, it is a constant discussion of the Opera House as a dream deferred.

No matter how much praise Utzon received for his spectacular concrete shells, the shadow of the project’s shortcomings and tumultuous construction has constistently haunted this once golden vision. Utzon sought the ultimate- a dream that was reality, but in his quest he failed to work within reality. His legacy will always include this lesson to the rest of us.

Perhaps we are better for it. Dreams are not an easy reality, and are not always meant to be. But that is not to say they should not be sought nonetheless- to dream and achieve is perhaps the best part of being human. The key to achieving their fusion not in constant defiance of one for the other, but rather seems to lie in simply understanding the differences in dreams and reality. My painting poses this question- I leave it to each viewer to figure out the answers for themselves, hopefully in a better fashion than Utzon did.

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