New Painting "Last Trip - A Dream" Completed

Last weekend, I completed an oil painting, titled "Last Trip - A Dream".  It was indeed based on a dream I had.

Several years ago, I had a chance encounter with an immaculately dressed old lady in my neighborhood and her exceptional good taste belied the time we lived in.  That was the start of our casual friendship and whenever I met her I always felt a sense of being granted a special access to a more elegant era, which had long ceased to exist.  Over the years, though she has getting frailer, she always declined any help I proposed to offer.  The last time I saw her, several weeks ago, she looked a bit down and somewhat less than perfectly careful with her look so I didn't have the heart to greet her, so as not to make her feel embarrassed.  It was perhaps silly on my part, but I think she'd appreciate it as my kindness.

Her frailty haunted me and in one of the following nights, I dreamed of her, lying on a large suitcase, dressed in black gossamer, readying for her last journey.  It was that dream inspired my painting below, though it was neither a literal description of the elegant lady, nor an accurate account of my dream.


Last Trip - A Dream
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"
Completed in 2013



Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst: 
- Three Magazines to Publish My Works in April
- Ink Drawing "Traces" Completed
- My Recent Drawings
- First Painting Completed in 2013

A Dream of Labor

I often had vivid dream- from blooming meadow to swinging corpse behind a door, either comforting or upsetting, with great visual impacts and sometimes served as starting point of my painting projects.

Last week, I had another strange dream and I am still trying to determine its meanings, if any, and if I should treat it as a painting object or not.

Ritratto di vecchia, Giorgione

I dreamed that I was in a restaurant, only by concept, without any visualizing of the specifics, and realized that our server was a very old woman - in her eighties or nineties, I somehow knew it in my dream sequence.  I was not alone, but couldn't tell whom I was with.  One of my companions voiced his or her concern for the old server and we were assured, perhaps by the restaurant's cheerful management, that we needed not to worry.  "She just performed a feat the other day and served a large party of eighty or ninety people by herself."

We were impressed and felt better.

Then, our old server tottered in, with her bend back absolutely parallel to the ground.  Several fully loaded large plates crowded on her stoic back

Quite an image, isn't it?  Perhaps, I should work on it?

A New Work

The dream that gave me the orange motif to the "Girl with a Doll" painting, also made me start a new one. Below is the very beginning of the process. All three photos were taken on 21 March 2009.