Visual Art and Dreams

Here are some dolls I made as a teen and some cloth sculptures I made as adult.

Sometimes my dreams influence visual art (when they don’t influence my fiction writing, as I mention in my Medium essay “Fiction Writing and Dreams”).

I once had a spiritual dream in which there were several women dressed in white robes, and they walked in the same direction and gathered, kneeling down on the floor… in front of a goddess who was glowing off-white. I made a cloth figure based on this dream but was disappointed in it. That reminds me: I’ve also considered painting a picture based on that dream. I think a painting would be a more appropriate medium because it could capture the surreal glow.

Years ago, I went through a phase in which I was sculpting a lot, mostly with Sculpey — polymer clay. I dreamed I made a sculpture of a completely yellow mermaid with a yellow cat. I made a sculpture based on the dream. I painted the mermaid and cat the yellow of the dream — but in hindsight, I should have treated it like fiction instead of being so literal. They didn’t need to be solid yellow just because that’s how they looked in the dream.

Of course, it goes both ways. I recently bought a used Victorian-style dollhouse and have been obsessed with redecorating it, and I came up with some ideas about the characters who live in the dollhouse and who visit — even though I don’t normally need a dollhouse for fiction writing. Anyway, sometimes I have dreams…