Dream Log: Missing Modern Art

I dreamed I was living in a hostel-like building: some people had rooms of their own to live in, others, such as myself, did not. I was staying in a large room with about a dozen other people. I had a small cabinet next to my bed.

Regarded from the outside, the building we were living in resembled a one-family house on a suburban street, with a small patch of lawn. One night I stayed up all night on the lawn painting a canvas about four feet tall by six wide. Other than its size, my painting had a general generic resemblance to some made by Julian Schnabel. The upper left quarter of the canvas contained one short word, the rest of the picture was abstract and had a visual quality reminiscent of the texture rough wood or torn burlap, although it contained a wide palatte of colors. I painted by the porch light until the sun came up, having no trouble seeing what I was doing. Shortly after dawn the painting was done. (In real life I'm no painter.)

Then someone stole it. I went around confronting local thieves and fences, trying to get my painting back. The painting was well-regarded by the local art community, and most people seemed to think it was worth high four figure or maybe a little over $10,000.

I couldn't remember what the word was in the upper-left quarter of the painting, and that hampered my search a bit. But I was sure that I would recognize the painting if I saw it. The thieves and fences were uncooperative, and some started to claim that I hadn't really made the painting. The local artists and art dealers were not much help, because they were afraid of the thieves and the fences. The police were divided between people who were afraid of the thieves, and people working for the thieves.

I wasn't afraid. It surprised me that I wasn't afraid of anyone, but I wasn't. Sometimes people pointed guns at me, and still I wasn't intimidated. I was determined to get my painting back, and I was still busting into thieves' and fences' homes and places of business and pushing them around and searching for my painting, and telling them that I wasn't planning to give up, and the simplest thing for them would just be to give up what they'd stolen, and then not bother me any more in the future, when I woke up.