How an artist processes images in similar to how the dreamer processes images. Artist have always used symbolic material as subject matter for their work. But the subject matter is only important to him in that it holds their attention, their focus and enthusiasm until they finish the work. Cezanne found apples symbolic for him. Picasso used nudes, as most male artists. (Apples and nudes are more acceptable at galleries than disturbing subject matter for sales. Goya’s "disasters of War" were printed after his death. There are few paintings of war, poverty, famine, bombing and murder of children in galleries. My medical art series are very unique in art.)
Why are first memories repeated into a pattern and not others, like in a continuum" How do we know that something is happening in our bodies without fully understanding what is going on? Perhaps the didadic imagery in a formal pictorial form can contribute to our knowledge of how the mind takes in information. Words describing a dream are usually employed translating a picture format into another medium, but in the doing, much is lost from the original form of the dream, which is in art. An artist can help, as long as he is as honest as can be. When he gets tried and feels no longer, he stops. Otherwise the work would be mechanical and woody. Painting a dream is a very sensual activity and the intense personal involvement is so deep, that one feels spent after a little while.
A dream is fleeting, like a piece of music once played and not recorded, it is gone. It is ethereal, only in one’s memory at best. It is unexpected as one does not know what one will dream,,,, there is no television program guide. And so it is always a surprise. Even when I read over a dream story and can not remember even writing it down, sometimes one word will lead me into the whole story again. It is somewhat like Hansel and Gretel’s pebbles making a trail back home in the woods. One strand will weave back into the total tapestry.
But how I play tricks on myself! Many times I can not understand my own handwriting and yet if I were to type it down in the awakening, that would disturb the remembrance as it is in a different medium from an extension of the dream. I can draw stick figures, tho. Sometimes when I attach the drawings to the back of a painting, they get "lost". There are clues, like the couple who know jokes so well, they number them and laugh when a certain number is said.
I realized that I had to paint as a child does, from the inside out, and let the shape grow like a seed does into a fruit. Only when it is finished do children give it a title and say what it is about. (A wise adult, respecting the child, never asks). This method is very different from the adult way, of making an outline and filling it in. Very carefully controlled, filled in outlines, suppress and lock in images and they can not grow and develop and change. They become static and there is no further joining with other shapes or movement in space.
I stretch heavy rag velum paper on a board with brown sticky tape. I paint with egg tempera and dry pigment with large Oriental brushes and let the butter like mixture drip from them. The fresh color is beautiful. This flexible medium is well suited to the organic growth of the subject matter, which is made up in layers in our mind. These layers can change ideas easily and build up a richness and depth like life itself...some parts are overlayed and others show the white of the paper, some are transparent.
Contents: The Art of May Lesser | An Artist Looks
at Dreams
Preface
Preface page 1 - "I feel
like I am being a traitor to..."
Preface page 2 - "I had left the
ivory tower of the art..."
Preface page 3 - "Out of our
private gropings and self..."
Preface page 4 - "In a dream, if
there is a child held..."
Preface page 5 - "There
is much in science that is..."
Preface page 6 - "The
symbolic use of animals in..."
Preface page 7 - "With
the medical series, I served as..."