Do you ever have nightmares? I mean, really bad nightmares? Nightmares that wake you in the middle of the night making it hard to fall back to sleep? Well, I have. When I was little, I had something referred to as "night-fright". I had such weird, scary dreams that would be so vivid that I would see the images during the day time. Yes, these dreams were so real to me that I can even remember what they were like to this day. Now these nightmares most likely are not what you're thinking. There wasn't a scary man or evil person attacking me. My life wasn't being threatened. These dreams had to do with colors. The dream would begin with splashes of bright colors. Swirls of colors coming in and out. These colors would then be attacked by darker brown and black colors which in a sense consumed the brighter colors. I heard sounds and I saw a face. A clear, wavy image of someone or something that was controlling these dark corrupting colors. What all this means, I am not sure. And although, written here, this dream sounds the least bit scary, I must tell you that it was very scary. Because it is so difficult to explain, I feel that art can help describe and illustrate certain things we invision in our minds, or even our dreams. While at UConn, I did my senior show art piece on nightmares. I interviewed many people in order to capture some sense of their own personal nightmares. I created a book, which I titled "Sweet Dreams", and I sewed a quilt of pillow cases together making an installation of a bedroom scene. These images are a few pages from the book and above is a picture of the actual installation at the Senior Show. 
1 comment:
I would love to see you do a series of largescale paintings illustrating the color war that occured in your nightmares. The scary face could even be faintly peering through the swirls and masses of color. I can almost see it in my mind. Think about it....it could be amazing!
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