My dreams have been flowing in a steady stream of powerful images every night, perhaps because I am reading "Alchemical Psychology" by James Hillman and stirring up the unconscious realm? Whatever the reason, I am carrying these images with me throughout the day and especially as I paint. I just start to mix the colors or dip the brushes and I am flooded with the previous nights dream images. If I just ignore them and don't try to grasp or understand them with my head but let them speak through the colors, movement and shapes they become even stronger and emerge from a more visceral level. A few nights ago I dreamt of a man eating from a gleaming oversized, silver dish. The dish was writhing with luminous lines all tangled and twisted into one another. I realized that he was eating a living snake. The next night I dreamt of this same image, a mandala of writhing lines, all moving and flowing into each other but this time there was a woman behind glass and she was singing the sounds of this mandala. I went behind the glass, opened the back door and saw only her empty bed but woke myself by screaming, "Mama!" Lots of juice in these dreams but what keeps returning in my waking time is the movement of those lines which my body responds to deeply. This is a sketch and a painting that I began last summer but that was practically screaming for me to finish it by painting the movement that I could feel swirling down my arm into the brush. I don't pretend to understand any of this, because I don't, but my body does and that is where I paint from.
Tides of Eternity / acrylic / 18" x 24"
2 comments:
I like how you write about your art, and how it comes to you, and where it takes you. It’s nice to have the art and the dreams connect. It happens to me, but not as often.
Thank you for sharing your process. I always find that when I allow the dream to find form in waking powerful things happen.
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