My friend and favourite contemporary artist Darren Coffield link is a man of amazing intellect and to hear him expose the influences behind one of his paintings is a rich invitation into the mind of a genius. I have two of his paintings and I intend to buy more when my finances allow, as he is clearly going to be one of the most influencial painters of our generation. One of the two is the initial proof for a series about dreams and it’s painted on fine silk which you can see through.
On initial inspection it looks like a black circle surrounded by squiggles in black and dark grey, but as your mind assimilates what is there it becomes clear that it is words written over each other, black in one direction, grey at right angles, each floating over the other but legible if you focus.
The painting signifies the moment of waking, when you can remember snippets of a dream for a short time, conversations, contexts, landscapes. As the mind awakes fully, so the dream fades, becomes more elusive, evaporates.
I was taught how to catch dreams about fifteen years ago, unconsciously waking at the end, keeping your eyes closed, writing on a pad next to the bed in a jumbled scribble, before falling asleep again.
So this morning I was deep in dream. I’ve not seen my good friend Maurice ‘Tigger’ Dawes for some time, but he was there in my dream showing me the house at the end of his lane. Strangely it had a deep, square-cut hole across its whole front, about the size of an olymic swimming pool. Inside there was a shed and a brand new Land Rover. The latest design, much more sweeping lines and somewhat reminiscent of the cab of a truck from the back. I wondered whether this was the latest experiential marketing campaign – maybe the idea was to work out how to get the thing out under its own steam.
The house was initially a strange big tent under an enclosed scaffolding, but when as we pushed through the broken front door it morphed into a darkly lit, wood panelled interior. Moving through we entered a room that had a seating gallery and there, seated all around, were fifty or sixty people. Maurice said that he had always wanted to perform a play there that had yet to be written, and spoke the first two lines. These escape me now but the crowd applauded.
Then I was walking along outside again, passing a group of youths sitting on the other side of the road, each holding a big stick. As I watched so the nearest youth arose and started running towards me, as if to continue a game of ‘it’. I ran away and glancing over my shoulder was pleased to see I was quicker than he. Slowing down, I picked up a large, flat stick and conversing amicably with him, I showed him how to ride it like a snowboard.
With this change of balance, I awoke.