drew|merryman

“in a morbid condition, dreams are often distinguished by their remarkably graphic, vivid and extremely lifelike quality. the resulting picture is sometimes monstrous, but the setting and the whole process of the presentation sometimes happen to be so probable, and with details so subtle, unexpected, yet artistically consistent with the whole fullness of the picture, that even the dreamer himself would be unable to invent them in reality, though he were as much an artist as pushkin or turgenev. such dreams, morbid dreams, are always long remembered and produce a strong impression on the disturbed and already excited organism of the person.”

- fyodor dostoyevsky, crime and punishment

sometimes realizing your dreams can be chilling, or inspiring or even confirming. just about every time i’ve paid serious attention to my dreams, my eyes have opened wider. i have woken up from a dream more than once and thought to myself, “i actually thought that up”, as if to think it were impossible to fabricate those thoughts now that i was ‘awake’ and surrounded by ‘real’ things.

when it comes to art, i find i can trace, copy, mimic, or butcher the images in front of my eyes and be satisfied, but when it comes to transferring pure visualizations or thoughts from my dreams onto paper, i am always caught struggling. when i picked up crime and punishment, i was not expecting to read the above quote. when i read it, i felt a sense of relief. my frustrations with dreams and art were confirmed 144 years ago. reading this and recognizing that people in the past have felt this way just as i do now, i now hold the utmost respect for all those who have ever attempted to visualize their dreams.

if man has been striving to reflect dreams within art all this time and has never been satisfied, it leads me to believe the thirst to record our last dream only quenches the complexity of the next, constantly developing both our personal levels of visualization and expression.