Birthing of a painting… and a dream

It all started with a dream:

Where I slowly fell into the depth of a pool, really deep, and looking up I could see the square opening of it, like a dark window. “It makes no sense” i keep telling myself, as usually the surface of the water would be light not dark, and I wouldn’t keep sinking with my lungs full of air. And then I just surrendered to the sweet softness of the water and the bizarre situation and just let go….

Starting with a piece of paper and lots of blue for the pool, I soon moved the paper over to a sturdy wooden board as I anticipated some mixed media use…

The figure that apeared was at first looking pretty horrible, more like a corps 🙂
and I liked the hair covering the face for a while but then it wasn’t as personal…

So I added a face….  and while the painting unfolded kept thinking about what the dark was all about in my dream. The surface of the world and all the terrible things happening. While demonstrations went bad in Turkey and other places in the world I was watching with horror as friends posted what happened around them. So this somehow ended up in my painting on the surface of the pool as a remind of the struggles we face in this world….

While I was painting I also had some thoughts about the process of letting go, that is perhaps how the mask came into the picture; letting go of how we present ourselves to the outside, also reflecting the masked person in the crowd, how we keep smiling….

…more bubbles and details but the red shirt had to go, too much of a reminder of Diren Gezi Park, which this painting wasn’t really about.

Finished painting in next post.