Brad Noble, as he himself admits, has an ambiguous relationship to the chaos around him. The same is true with his paintings. On one hand, his works present an embrace of chaotic, entropic elements: faces unravel or fade into near obscurity; heads unwind out of cloth or under mazes, or never seem to have existed at all. On the other, he seeks out impeccable balance (of form, color, composition) for his subjects. He wants them to talk, to communicate effectively, to bring forth meaning. In this new body of work, however, Noble is announcing that these seemingly disparate elements may not stand in opposition after all.

One particular reason Noble is able to resolve the chaos is that he approaches it wielding a very powerful weapon—he is a painting prodigy. With a proficient talent like the Old Masters and an imagination like the Surrealists, this painter seems to effortlessly bring bodies, souls, and worlds into being. One evening a canvas will be blank. The next morning a woman has been born and is floating in a copper sea. As Noble acknowledges, he listens very intently to what his creations have to say to him. So, a figure might whisper something to him about her desires; she wants a view and some protection. He gives her a desert with a distant horizon and some ribbon. Or, perhaps sometimes, it happens that the woman born so easily wasn't ready for this world and must quietly but definitively disappear.

Noble's artistic process is integral to what he is attempting in his paintings. He thinks of his paintings as "hypnagogic dreamscapes." A hypnagogic state is that "place" between sleeping and waking. It wavers between hallucinogenic and completely lucid. There is a sharp recognition of objects and figures, but the rules are not the same as those in either a waking or sleeping state. In fact there are no rules. The dynamics of this hypnagogic dream state—where forms change quickly and elaborate, literary relationships are constructed out of heightened emotional values—inform Noble as he is working.

Noble's paintings get to the heart of the relationship between wakefulness and the unconscious. Imagine waking up after a complex, difficult dream that you can't quite remember. The details elude you, but you remember very clearly the associated emotion. Noble connects us—the viewer—back to that emotion and then shows us what we might have seen.

The other component to this practice that is critical is the artist's emphasis on spontaneity. Noble was trained in illustration and entertainment design at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. But while his program was technical and rigorous, the fine arts focus at the college was on abstraction. He never connected to abstraction in a visual sense but was very drawn to the spontaneity of creation that is one of abstraction's central ideas. Noble wondered why one couldn't think of figurative painting in the same way.

So, he has done just that. And, as he says, "Even though at the final end of the journey the piece might not show that it was one of those chaotic creations, that spontaneity to me keeps it fresh."

The results of this painter's wrestling with chaos are works of complex metaphor yet stunning clarity. In Quagmire a stooped man, whose body is cracked and separating, gazes lovingly at the green tip of an otherwise decaying, thorny vine that has woven over his ankles and restricts his movement. In spite of his condition, the man sees only the fresh life of the vine, even as it is clear to the viewer that it will eventually overtake him. The effect is visceral and evocative.

Which Door Leads to Heaven pictures two figures. With arms outstretched, one covers the eyes of the other, while the one whose eyes are closed covers the mouth of the one who renders her blind. In other words, the one who can see cannot speak. The one who can speak cannot see. We are witness to a stalemate, a conundrum. Yet the sympathy and beauty of the figures evoke a softness. It becomes clear that these souls are so similar and their impotence temporary—if they would only drop their pretense to power.

In Stronghold a woman stands with her back to us. She holds a rock in a sling and seems to stand on guard against unseen threats along the horizon. But this slingshot comes with a trade off that the artist is very aware of. "If she does decide to start swinging that thing around she might have to unravel the headdress, so she will become more and more transparent. You will start to see who she is as she has to express more and more of whatever control she needs." It is the paradoxes of living that Noble expresses so gracefully, with the emotion of those moments resonating so clearly.

Brad Noble acknowledges the chaos of this world and what it can teach him. These paintings are his attempt to make this chaos—this universal soup that is the raw material of our cells, bodies, lives—into something shared and meaningful.

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