I had two huge dreams last night. One was definitely a nightmare. I was playing in the back yard at my parents' house. My brother was there. He had a tiger with him. The tiger belonged to my father. I was terrified. He put the tiger back into the basement by the outside steps and door. But he didn't close the door. I yelled at him, "Close the door, asshole!" But he refused. The tiger was huge and filled the entire basement. I was upstairs in the house yelling at my father and my brother. "If you don't secure the tiger in the basement I will call the police!"
I notice that in a couple of recent nightmares I yelled at my father. This is new and is probably a cool thing. That doesn't, however, stop the dreams from being nightmares. And another new thing is that I felt them as nightmares at the time, in the night. That is, I woke up terrified.
The same night as the trunk dream I had another nightmare. This one was about the end of a relationship. I never saw how horrible the relationship was until this moment when it all turned to dust. The dream relived the time when a former girlfriend told me that she was leaving me for another woman. I was shocked and so hurt. In the dream I tried to speak to my girlfriend. I was so very upset but she wouldn't listen to me. Finally I said that I had only one more thing to say -- that what hurt me the most was that she had stopped speaking to me. In the beginning she could hardly stop telling me about herself -- but then she did. The entire thing was a horror. I cried so much. Eventually she told me to stop crying because it hurt her too! Imagine that. And I had no come back. I was drowning in tears. I did stop crying and to this day still cannot cry.
I was in a car driven by my mother. We left from our house and I asked her where we were going. She replied that we were going to the airport to pick up my father. He was there looking at a museum even though he was blind.
Later my father was in the car and no one was driving. My mother was in the trunk. Locked in the trunk. I could hear her in there. She said she had to go to the bathroom and was now locked in the trunk. It was horrible. The car then was a flat metal thing with a clasp locking it shut.
I got into the driver's seat, stopped the car and got her out.
We were at my grandmother's house. My father's mother. I yelled at my father. There were several strong young men there to help and protect me in case he attacked. I told him that he would be in the trunk next -- and to never ever put her in the trunk again.
I did a couple more slow paintings yesterday. A lot of feelings get stirred up as I paint -- mostly sadness and some anger. As I was beginning the first one and noticing how it was going, I said to myself, "Life is not pretty." So that's the title. It's true too. And then last night I had nightmares. And I knew they were nightmares. They felt like nightmares. That's new.
I guess there's two ways to look at slow painting. The first could be about my progress on the acrylic still life where I'm still back at day one. The underpainting. The missed spots around the objects are there so that I can see the composition. The next step will be to add colour beginning at the focal point.
Another type of slow painting is when the actual brush strokes are slow. Or slower than my usual. Jab jab jab. In the last few days I've been trying to paint slow. I really like it. Putting paint on the paper feels like a meditation. And for me, when I can manage to slow down, feelings come up.
I almost forgot week 12 in Colour class. The topic was Transparency. It's meant to look as if one piece of tissue paper has been laid over another. Really, as you can see, it's 3 mixed colours. Some of my efforts were more successful than others. I was just playing by the end and the teacher pointed out that the effect was more clear when the edges were clear as well. Right. That was my last class of the term.
I went to school yesterday to pick up my work from the open house. It's a few weeks until classes start again. I'll be taking the same five classes as first term. Yesterday I did a couple of paintings. Also the two life drawings from the show -- I have photos of all four. The drawings were using a straightedge to go around the contour angles. One turned out really wonky but kind of fun. I've just set up a fruit and vegetable still life which will take a few days to paint.
The end of term open house is on this weekend at TSA. I was there on Wednesday to help hang the show and on Friday to show sit. Thursday night was the opening reception. I took some photos -- highlighting my own work, of course!
I had a dream this week about a puppy. I have never had a dream about being pregnant or having a baby but this dream was about giving birth to a puppy. A doctor injected me with something and the next day I had a puppy -- in the usual way. He just popped out inside my jeans. It was a tiny Yorkshire terrier like I've been looking at recently. Even more surprising -- this was not a scary or repulsive dream at all. I am afraid of most animals, especially cats. I've worried that being pregnant would freak me out, feeling some unknown thing growing inside me and that having a baby to care for would terrify me. The doctor was even a man. Strange!
I did another version of the nightmare with crows and wild animals. I'm starting to think the black crows are also my father -- his presence everywhere in the house, in my life and in my head. And then the wild feelings that no one would see. And the constant terror and threat of rage.
I had a nightmare last week. It was at my parents' house. I was extremely upset and scared because the house seemed to be overrun with animals. Many huge crows came in the window at the top of the stairs. There were also several large cats that kept taking swipes at me with their sharp claws. My parents ignored the animals and my upset. It was horrible. Maybe the wild beasts were feelings that no one wanted to acknowledge were there. The picture didn't feel nightmarish enough so I've added a second version below.
I've done the colour exercise for week 11. It's called the two colour palette. First we choose two colours and then mixed many colours with them. That's shown on the first square with the dots of colour. Then we used all the colours to make a collage. The second collage is identical but for a colour anomaly. The third collage has a bridge colour to unify the colour scheme. I'm not sure if mine is correct but it works for me. Sadly the collages are covered in paste. I used to be a very neat and tidy person.
In the last painting class today the teacher gave a critique of each person's work. I didn't take in all of what he said to me but I do remember his exclamation when I lined up all my work. "Hey, look at that!" he said about the painting I did today in about an hour. This was the painting of Matisse by Derain -- the vice versa of the portrait of Derain by Matisse. The teacher liked both of my copies a lot but said the paintings were so famous they would be dismissed as copies in the Open House. Instead I'm showing the Cezanne copy that I "made my own."
The term ends this week but for two make-up classes next week. My study is a mess being completely full of art supplies and a half-finished colour exercise -- 3 identical collages waiting to be glued together. Eventually one will include a "colour anomaly" and the third will have the anomaly and a "bridge tone" or two that will tie it all back together. I hope. In collage class I did two more pieces. One includes a bit of sewing and a transferred image.
