How a Dream Turned into a Painting

Carla: Elaine Drew links one of her paintings directly to a dream. In this post she'll show us the path that took her there.

Elaine Drew: The inspiration for this piece, called Journey was a dream in which I was to about to be sacrificed in a primitive religious rite. (That scene is represented in the 3rd panel of this 4 panel painting.) What, I wondered, was that all about?

Because the dream seemed to embody a spiritual quest of some sort, I organized the artwork along the lines of a medieval predella, a small strip of narrative scenes that appear at the bottom of an altarpiece. This organization reflected my asking myself what was at the bottom of the dream?

This led me to think that consciousness, the great gift that makes us human, might be a double-edged sword. That is the theme of the second panel. Here the figure carries consciousness like both a precious gift and a burden.

So, in the first image we enter life, unconscious, enclosed in a particular culture and point of view. Our first task is to break out of our shells, hit the road, and experience life in all its complexities. As we do this, in the second panel, we attain consciousness, and this includes the awareness of our own mortality. In the third panel we face the threat that this hard earned consciousness will be obliterated.

Wait a minute! I thought. I've been told that dreams come to us to tell us things we don't know. My piece needed a 4th panel, one that would get me past the limits of my current understanding.

It took a while, and some of the false starts most of us are familiar with when we try to solve a problem. Finally, as you can see in the 4th panel, the idea of the renewed self emerges into a built environment. And then the meaning of the piece became clearer to me: while I will probably never understand the mystery of life on earth, I can understand the process of death and resurrection that often plays a part during our lives. We are asked to sacrifice, and at times it feels like too much. Or we find our hopes or ideas dead in the water. But then a kind of natural salvation kicks in. We re-emerge with an expanded consciousness. It engulfs us, and we see the world through it. We are now in the world we built, no longer wandering in a barren wilderness. The sacrifice is behind us.

So, the Journey begins again. The painting is about life, about change, about learning as we go, and about the hope for an ultimate understanding that makes sense of it all.

The Symbolic Meaning of the Resurrection

On Easter, the day the Christian religion celebrates the resurrection of god, I find myself pondering the meaning of this archetypal event. For believing Christians it most fundamentally represents the conquest of mortality, but I think it has other meanings as well.  Its concurrence with the springtime rebirth of nature aligns the event with ancient celebrations of fertility, and we have remnants of these celebrations in the ubiquitous eggs and bunny rabbits of Easter Sunday. Even the word Easter has fertility associations; the encyclopedia Britannica quotes the 8^th c. Venerable Bede as saying that the day was named for “Eostre, or Eostrae, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility.” 

Yet for me the concept of resurrection has a meaning that is not tied to a particular wish (to defeat death) or time of year (spring). For me its most profound meaning is found in the ups and downs of life. There are times when I feel defeated, burned out, used up, finished. And then, a sort of miracle happens: in some mysterious way my spirit resurrects; I can go on; I have new life. So, I offer to you the idea of your perpetual resurrection, here, in this life.

The Symbolic Meaning of Easter

Just as we have personal dreams, religious myths embody group dreams or shared symbolic content, what Jung calls the collective unconscious. Looking at Easter from this point of view, I see a marvelous tangle of meaning: the one I’ll focus on here is how we participate psychically in the myth of resurrection. First there is the sacrificial death, symbolizing the death of my individual, potentially antisocial desires for the greater good of the group. As I contemplate the god dying for the good of the group, I participate by sacrificing some of my selfishness for the good of others.  Once I’ve acknowledged the “bad” parts of myself, symbolized by the god going down into hell, I’m ready for resurrection as  purified and perfected (or at least somewhat improved) member of society.

At its most primitive level, this yearly resurrection coincides with the rebirth of nature in the northern hemisphere. Ancient fertility rites lie not too deeply below the many-layered observance. Participating in the fertility of nature gives me food, or sustenance, and, with our own propagation, carries the life force forward. At the spiritual level, the myth celebrates our human attainment of consciousness: we have transcended our animal nature and been reborn into a higher, godlike, level of awareness.

Artists in the Garden

In dreams sometimes a friend is a friend, and sometimes the friend represents some particular part of you. I often dream about two close artist friends, Jane and Lillian. Over time I’ve come to realize that when these friends appear in one of my dreams they represent the artist in me.

The Dream: I am going to be leaving, and I am with Jane in the garden. Swiss chard is growing in a peculiar, leggy way from under a raised wooden walkway. “Look,” I say, “You can eat this.” Then I remember the squash, adding, “And don’t forget the squash.”

Lillian has appeared, walking behind us carrying a huge bunch of Joseph’s coat roses that she has gathered and is taking from the garden. She looks somewhat pleased with herself, and happy, holding this glowing mass of color. When she sees me I sense, however, a little discomfort. I wonder, very briefly, if I feel proprietary, as she walks away with most of my rosebush. But instead I realize I realize that I’m happy that these things will be used. I point to the squash, mentioning that they are very prolific, and suggest to Lillian and Jane that they share them.

Interpretation: I have been stingy with my artists, causing them to struggle to survive. As one bursts forth in a glorious resurrection I offer to squash them both.