It is possible to have a dream and not understand it until years later. For example, a dream about child with a bandaged head and another with a figure which has both a male and female configuration. Only when I witnessed cranial facial reconstructive surgery many years later, did the origin of the dream images occur to me. And that memory came from the noise of the surgeon’s chiseling.
As we study music appreciation to gain a richer insight into sounds orchestrated into themes, variations and melodies, time intervals that go in the making of a symphony, so we can increase our understanding of the visual format of creativity, the pictures of dreams. We can study by examining the art, the shapes, colors, movements, simplicity, clarity or the reverse, as a product in itself. We can study metaphors, symbols, primary objects and associations to it, not by words and their puns, rather by the natural change the mind makes. We have sight before language, our hands move when we talk, meaning that we had sign language of some sort before speech. So as we view art to explore if it is three dimensional or flat, simple or confused, primitive or sophisticated technique, the unusual or the obvious, crisp or dark and muddy, bright or muted, outlined and contained or open edged, close or far apart objects, the dream does not need to be transformed into another modality, that is, into words.
The viewer of these paintings can associate to someone else’s dreams as well as to his own, like the professor describing my painting did in his own vernacular. He saw the Christ rising and the Last Supper in one. Since there is a certain amount of universal symbolism, the images will mobilize associations as they are viewed. I present these art works without any interpretations according to Freud or Jung or other psychiatrists. These paintings may help observers recall some images even though they may not be aware of experiencing them while dreaming. The art may resonate experiences in the unconscious without the awareness of their reason and without words. Many experiences are coded non-verbally. Perhaps they can encourage the adult to be "the child" once more. This can be a profound experience.
I will show a few medical series art works, then some landscapes which were my retreat from the intense interactions of the medical center and always having to get approval for the art work and legends that accompanied the art. Every word of the text was scrutinized by the professors and chairmen and chancellors. So to go out in the part or by the lakefront and be on my own was a great release. I did not know life could be so simply! Finally I will present the dream etchings and paintings, which came as a parallel to the medical series. Only, in the medical series and the landscapes, there was the drawing board between me and the "what I was drawing". In a way, the drawing board became a shield and I was behind it. With the dream paintings, I was alone with the dream. They, then, are far more intimate, more intimate than with another person, even physician and his patient.
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..."