Renee French couldn’t sleep the other night. Judging by a handful of captions and the various post times that grace her newly launched blog, a night’s insomnia is hardly a freak occurrence, these days—a touch ironic, perhaps, given the nature of the art that graces the page like a lucid dream, in many cases strange and wonderful even in terms of an artist who has built a career upon images of emotional surreality.

I was at work for an hour when she sent me a message. Late by her time—1 A.M., half a world away in Australia where she’s currently holed up.

“Hey Heater,” she begins. It’s a weird conversation. I talk about marsupials, she discusses the merit—or, rather, lack thereof—of Northern Californian pizza, and before the 20 minute chat has ended, I find myself uttering the words, “I’m cool. Like a rock. An onion cutting rock.”

I still not sure what happened.

More importantly, however, she hands off this piece of art, which has yet to find its way onto her own site. It’s another part of the insomniac dream puzzle.

As I write this, it’s getting close to 1 AM, my time, the blurry images on the site seem to make sense–certainly more than they did at ten this morning, under the buzz of neon office lights–congealing together to form a whole. Which is to say, maybe there’s something to this insomnia business, after all.

[Full art, after the jump.]

–Brian Heater

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