R. Michael Wommack

I have been working on this new series of drawings for the past 4 years. A while back, I had a few dreams on different nights about being back in my childhood neighborhood in Levittown, PA. In one of the dreams, I was swimming in lit pools at night, that were interconnected, the sole source of light coming from the pools. This was a strange dream on several levels; I am not a particularly good swimmer, and only one person in my neighborhood had a pool. We moved to Juniper Hill in the early 60’s when I was six years old, the houses were newly built. As far as the eye could see there was the same house, in one of three alternating colors, in a gently curving and undulating artificial landscape. The trees were mere sticks, and no one had put up fences. Surrounded by plowed fields, on which Levittown was built, the visual impact was compounded when approaching this community of 14,000 homes in a car. As a first grader having previously lived in a country house, this experience was profound.

Inspired by these dreams, I immediately began putting them to paper. I pulled out my soft pastels, and began drawing from memory. The colors in my dreams were incredibly vivid, and it turned out pastel was a perfect medium due to the pure pigment used in making them. I became interested in the idea of the subconscious and where working from memory would take me. It may be that our early impressions are made more vivid by the simple fact we have had fewer of them. At the age of six our brains are uncrowded, the things we see and experience make a deeper impression on our minds. I am also interested in the fact that most Americans have lived in a place like this at one time or another, and the social ramifications of living in such a manner.

I don’t care to deconstruct any of the dreams, but I am interested in tapping the imagery. I am not concerned with historical accuracy, but in the emotions caused by living in such a place at an early age. I am not interested in making a specific social statement. I like to keep aspects of the drawings ambiguous, to allow the viewer their own interpretation of what it means to live in American Suburbia.