In the Academy Award-winning film “Titanic,” the main character, Rose, describes the work of a rising artist as akin to “being inside of a dream.” The same can be said of regional artist Charles Reyburn of Waterford, whose paintings invite us into a realm filled with mystique.

“To ‘step inside a painting,’ you’re taking in a spectrum of colors that strive to make something happen,” Reyburn said during a recent interview at the Blisswork Yoga Studio on State Street in New London, where much of his work is on display. “There are nuances of colors available to an easel painter where light is changing all the time, and you are putting one color against another to get a desired effect.”

Soft spoken and bearing the look of a wistful college professor, Reyburn explained his craft as though guiding a classroom of promising students through the fundamentals of painting.

“We are visually intelligent creatures and are able to perceive what constitutes beauty... as, for example, with a sunset,” Reyburn said. “The choices for colors are limitless."

“I usually show a tendency toward the beauty and attractiveness of a day... even stormy ones. I’m always comfortable being in such settings with my French easel and a classic wooden palette. You forget all about time while you’re there.”

Reyburn’s eye captures a variety of themes which he then expresses pictorially.

“In many ways you’re suggesting ideas and themes and hoping someone who views the work will connect with it,” he said. “You’re, in essence, trying to create a world, and it’s something you do all on your own. It has nothing at all to do with machines. This is a solitary endeavor that’s entirely up to you.”

Charles Reyburn reflects his soul via his paintings, displaying through art much of the way in which he perceives the world.

“It’s about inspiration,” he said, “and setting everything up with an approach that might even be compared to the manner in which an engineer works. You decide in advance, for instance, where the horizon will be in a picture and all the other aspects too.

“I will then ‘grid’ out a painting before actually beginning,” he said.

It is fascinating to hear of an artist laying out a structural design for what he already captured in his mind’s eye, then planning meticulously for images that will ultimately prove most compelling.

“One of the great challenges of a painting is being able to shrink a larger setting into a much smaller one and then make it all fit on the canvas,” he said. “It’s determining first what you are going to paint and exactly how you’re going to do it. It has to be just right.

“This is still a work of art you’re developing... not a science project. ... In the process, you leave all the noise and distractions from the world behind you.”

Yet, it is the grid Reyburn referenced that allows him to organize and prepare properly for how he will measure and scale his paintings convincingly before adding in the colors.

“Once I’m past the initial drawing phase, the power of suggestion dictates all the rest,” he said.

Reyburn is not someone who sits around waiting to be inspired; instead, he derives inspiration from a simple daily walk, or from sitting on a beach and taking in its peaceful ambience or from catching the delightful antics of animals and birds and insects.

Much of Reyburn’s work is exploratory, much akin to stepping inside a dream that both invites and embraces a brief departure from the more prosaic patterns of daily life.

His artistic eye captures a composite of settings he then explores and recreates on canvas, reflecting the intellectual state of the world as he sees it. “Each painting is like a visual poem,” said Reyburn, “suggesting themes to be considered.”

He speaks with soulful passion of his affinity for the beech trees at Seaside in Waterford, near Harkness State Park: “In my paintings, I try to convey the brighter, sunnier themes that can lead to contemplating the beauty of life. I find a lot of that in the presence of beech trees.”

And if there’s one painting where Charles Reyburn goes beyond the limits of paint and canvas, it’s the one of he and his wife Trish’s long-lived old cat, Pax, whose smooth white fur radiates from within the borders of the frame, and beckons that you reach inside an ethereal spirit world to pet the contented feline there.

Reyburn has been engaging in visual magic all the way back to his elementary school days at Harbor School in New London; then at Pine Point Middle School in Stonington; Pomfret Boarding School during his high school years, and finally at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

“Whenever I complete a painting, I feel like I’ve done a full day’s work ... and that I’ve accomplished something in spite of the time frame involved,” he said with a smile of satisfaction.

The public can view his paintings on Facebook and attend a special public display of Reyburn’s rare brand of paintings at the Yoga Blissworks Studio’s Grand Reopening Celebration at 228 State St., New London from 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20.