“When the soul wants to experience something, she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.” Meister Eckhart
“Life force dreams give to the one dreaming transubstantiation power to reenact his dreams and to reproduce their pictured forms as reality into outer life.” Ann Ree Colton, Watch Your Dreams, p.119
Dreams are inherently creative. Many artists, poets, composers, writers and inventors have received creative inspiration in their dreams. All dreams, visions, ideas and inspirations come to us in “image-language.” For example, Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine, could not figure out where to place the eye in the machine’s needle. Then he dreamed he was building a sewing machine for a king in a strange country. Just as in his waking life, Howe was perplexed about where to place the needle's eye. The king gave him twenty-four hours to complete the machine and make it sew. If he didn’t complete the machine, he would be killed. In the dream, Howe worked and worked, and finally gave up. He was taken out to be executed. Warriors arrived carrying spears that were pierced near the head. Howe instantly saw the solution to his needle problem, and while begging for time in the dream, he woke up. It was 4 o'clock in the morning. He jumped out of bed, ran to his workshop, and by 9 AM, a needle with an eye at the point had been crudely modeled.
Because dreams are so visual and cinematic, they really lend themselves to being expressed visually. Expressing dreams and visions through art is not new. People have been creating visionary art since the paleolithic era.
It is completely possible for everyone to express their dreams visually without having any training in art. In our dream group, we have used very simple techniques and very accessible materials to express our dreams. Sometimes we just do a quick drawing of a dream. We have also tried cartooning, paper collage, mandalas, mandorlas, small dioramas, cut paper, etc. We have created masks and crowns and boxes. Dream creativity is in no way limited to visual art. Dreams can be explored through poetry, stream of consciousness writing, music, dance, theater, and rituals.
We don’t have to represent every detail in a dream. It is enough to depict one or more of the key symbols in the dream – or to simply express the feeling tone of the dream. Try to approach dream creativity with a playful, inquiring mind!
If you’d like to see a profound example of a painter bringing her dreams into visual expression, click on this link to the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbols (aras.org) to see Katherine M. Sanford’s oil paintings.
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