Opening on Saturday, November 14th, 2026 at Roq La Rue gallery in Seattle, Washington is artist Brian Despain's solo exhibition, "The Weight of Dreams."

Painted in his trademark stormy blues, creams, and ochre palette- Brian's work explores a fantastical menagerie of living animals as symbolic characters. These animals are often mythically charged in numerous cultures adding extra layers of archetypal meaning. Themes of endlessly cycling duality and the push pull of the light vs the dark, life and death  create a compelling narrative, created to be seductively beautiful but slightly disconcerting at the same time.

Dreams have weight. Not just the half remembered visions that come to you at night, leaving you sweat-soaked and twisted in your bed sheets as dawn breaks upon the day,.. but also those dreams of our waking hours. Those hopes and visions all come at a cost, be they the anxious fears of what may happen on the morrow, or the long range, yearning hope for a better future. That type of dream has a price, weights measured in hard work, sacrifice, anxiety, existential dread, and even unforeseen consequence. In this series I worked to manifest this idea, captured in visions meant to both delight and mystify, but also to remind us that no matter how grand the dream, nothing in this life is free. - Brian Despain