dreams – Page 4 – A View from the Wheelhouse

I begin this post with only the vaguest notion of what it’s about. A feeling, a mood that has to do with twilight is all there is to go on at this point. Sometimes we are simply empty of ideas. Nothing of worth seems to loom on the horizon in the way of inspiration. There is nothing to go on except some vague feeling, and an impulse to create. This fear of abandonment by the creative muse has given me much angst but, over the years, I’ve developed strategies for dealing with this problem. One way is to begin with a color, to paint a canvas with a ground of a single hue and visualize it as I drift off to sleep, asking that an image come to me in dreams. As for the question of to whom I am making this appeal I can only say that it is addressed to Great Spirit, Hypnos, the Household Gods or maybe even my own inner wisdom. The problem of from where dream imagery originates has never been satisfactorily answered. I used this method in the painting Oriens. I asked for a symbolic image for one of my Four Directions series-that of East. When I woke next morning and, disappointed with a lack of response from the dream oracle, I opened the hatch on my boat and saw, rising from the low-lying fog, a vision of a celestial city bathed in the glorious morning light. It was Seattle, a city very much situated in the waking world. What this says about the efficacy of my method I don’t know, except that it inspired me to look at the external world in a fresh way.

Here is a canvas covered with atmospheric veils of blue/violet and red/violet that suggests a seascape on an inland sea. In fact, it looks like Port Madison. I evoke the ineffable feeling of the moment between two lights-that of day and nocturnal luminance that lights the inner workings of soul. When one is illuminated the other falls into shadow.

In my research of Port Madison history, it seemed those who inhabited these shores appeared to me in the violet hour, spectral forms who emerge from the shadows to demand remembrance, nourishment from the life they’ve long left behind. These phantoms seem to advance and recede as I work the material.

This image was a rubbing/transfer from a photocopy into my sketchbook. Only after I photographed and enlarged it again was I able to discern the presence of figures who eluded me before. They emerge with the process of working the image with different media. It’s as if the artistic process is a form of conjuration. In contemplation of these sombre hues I call forth the restless shades who reside beyond the dusky veil to take their places in the visible world.

Here is another go at an old unresolved work. As this blog is about the art process, I include it despite its cloying sappiness. It was inspired by a story from the same manuscript in which Gawain’s story is told. It is called The Pearl. By a stream, the poet falls asleep and dreams of a maid who leads him to wondrous visions of salvation. Nearly 20 years ago I decided to memorize it and can recall some of it still.

From the memory practice unfolded a long period of work with lucid dreams, of bringing conscious intent to bear on the spontaneous flow of dream imagery by doing walking meditation and mantra within the dream itself. The dream mantra invokes the aid of compassionate deities as we wander alone through the hazardous pathways of the dream bardo. According to Tibetan Buddhists, This prepares us for the bardo after death.

opposites 002 — These illustrations are from Carl Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy

In the poet’s dream, the unconscious is pushed into conscious awareness like oceanic tides flooding upriver. This inundation has been long expressed in flood myths. Its flow forms an imaginal landscape and the sudden release of its energy forces a breakthrough of vivid imagery. This can form a tsunami if not channeled through the creative process. It demands integration with our logical mind. It becomes necessary to reconcile the irreconcilable, to balance contrary states into a healthy, creative relationship. This is the artistic process.

stream drawing 002 — This drawing is for a new version.

This harmony is represented in Alchemical imagery as the mystic marriage. Sufi’s have a phrase, ishq’ allah mabudlilah, which means something like: Love, lover and beloved are One. This sacred phrase speaks of how we are continuous with all we behold, and that knowledge of this truth transforms us through knowing it. It is the Gnostic vision. The subject/object dichotomy is illumined by a larger, more inclusive totality that embraces paradox.

The Golden Mean expresses this truth and is the proportion closest to the original unity from which multiplicity arises.