Suitcase of Dreams

I remember the day I started to record my dreams, it was the 8th November 1995, the day that my mum suddenly died out of the blue.  Somehow turning inwards was the only thing to do.  I have kept dream journals since that day almost twenty years ago.

This is one of my suitcase of dreams, together with a blackboard from a performance entitled "Talk to me" (more details to follow).  I like to think of this practice of dreaming and writing as the ground of my work as an artist.  In recalling my dreams I am able to connect to a huge source of  imagery, ideas, characters, and stories.  I have amplified one dream I had several years ago, about an encounter with a very special breed of sheep, into one overarching project that spans the mediums of drawing, mask-making, felt-making and performance.

(See my other blog http://globalsheepwomanresearchlaboratory.blogspot.de for more details).

Although I've been dreaming and writing for so long I know the work has barely started, the hard work is to sift, design, craft, graft and bring some of these images through into waking reality, also the ability to know which images are worth bringing to life and which are better left in the swamp of my unconscious mind.

A friend of mine recently asked me how I recorded my dreams, I replied that I always wrote them down with the occasional drawing.  Then I realised that this was not quite correct as I looked through an old dream diary from 2009 which consists almost entirely of drawings.  I find it much harder to draw my dreams than I do to write them but somehow the images no matter how feint take me straight back to the feeling of the dream.

Here is a sneak preview from one dream diary.