Dream City 1 - the one that started the series

Here is Dream City I    

This is the one that started the series. I had been doing a scene of Finn Slough with a winter sunset and started thinking "what if the telephone poles were minarets?" So then I started this painting, changed the sunset, changed the buildings, turned the telephone poles into minarets - and let my imagination go. I've never been to Istanbul so I was not hindered by reality. Then I started thinking about how much fun it is to imagine places and decided to do a little "travelling" with my brush. So many places  now seem to be homogenized modern cities, yet in imagination they can be more individual and romantic. In the "statement" I posted for the show, I quoted Edgar Degas who said "It is all well to copy what you see, but it is better to draw what you see in your mind...Then your memory and your imagination are freed from the tyranny imposed by nature."