Hey folks,
It’s been about a week since I’ve posted anything. I went into a little bit of a funk. I seem to have these every now and again. I’ll have a really nice and productive week. I’ll have created and posted some new work maybe every other day for a few weeks in a row, and then suddenly the wind vanishes from my sails, and I’m adrift. I don’t even want to LOOK at any artwork or even watch a tutorial. I’m done with Art during that time, and I have to spend my free time sitting in a recliner watching old seasons of Survivor or worse yet, ‘Fear the Walking Dead’.
Being a middle-aged artist and encountering some of the new challenges that come along with that, I’ve sought some counsel. I’ve started reading this book titled “Hidden Blessings” by Jett Psaris. It’s a really interesting exploration of some of the mental and spiritual changes that occur as we all start to hit this milestone in the journey of our lives. One of the areas in which reading this book has built some increased awareness for me is in the realm of dreams, and ‘dream-work’.
My dreams generally tend to be of the un-remarkable variety. Dreams in which I show up to a college course for the first time on the last day having missed the entire course…on exam day. Stuff like that. About a week ago however, I had maybe the first dream I can recall ever having that actually had a completely new ‘creature’ in it.
In this dream, I’m in the basement of the house I grew up in. It’s completely dark, and I can sense that there is something moving in between the floor joists, the gas pipes, plumbing, etc. I happened to have a flashlight in my hand that I now switched on and pointed up. This extremely creepy, pitch black creature with a humanoid head, but no mouth, no ears, and no nose… only eyes, is revealed, slithering and floating between the pipes as I am desperately trying to track it with the light so that I can see if it turns toward me. That was essentially the whole thing. I woke from this nightmare and was inspired to create a digital painting of what I saw.
The author of Hidden Blessings contends that dreams are one of many ways in which our souls speak to us. According to the author, dreams are a bluntly honest language of visuals and feelings that are meant to help us to grow spiritually-or to get unstuck from a rut we may find ourselves inhabiting. The gift of this particular dream was perhaps to provide me a glimpse into a paranoia that perhaps proceeds from my childhood roots. There has to be definite significance to the fact that the creature had only eyes. The resulting painting was a truly haunting image that seriously creeps me out each time I look at it. In the short term, the dream offered me some needed inspiration to get back to what I really love doing! Maybe that’s at least part of the point? The subject matter that I connect with on the most personal level (even if it’s a deep personal fear) can somehow provide the fuel to get me moving forward again. I hope you enjoy the image!