Dream State: Senior Exhibition
Edgar Allan Poe once said, “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” My work reflects Poe’s in that through various media, I reflect on how my dreams and reality overlap, collide, and at times, are one in the same. I have always favored dark or macabre themes. While others may find my dream state verging on the side of a nightmare, I find beauty, intrigue, and pleasure in those ideas that are dark. I bring my dreams to life through photo, graphic design, and mixed media. Processing my dreams through my art is a catharsis, and it keeps the darkness from swirling into chaotic cloudiness in my head.
My work transitions from the real to the surreal in my photographs, which feature altered portraits and preserved remains. Likewise, my paintings, prints, and graphic works exemplify bringing nightmares and dreams together. My purpose is to show a sense of reality within a dream state, while also communicating a balance between life and death. This work and thought process mirrors that of artists like Zdzisław Beksiński, Annegret Soltau, and Dave Mckean because they work with different mediums and bring dream-like and nightmarish ideas to life through their art. Edgar Allan Poe has been an inspiration for much of my art, specifically my book arts, due to his dark and mad sense of writing from stories like The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart. Sally Mann is a photographer that is known for photographing death and creating photographs that have an unfinished and scratched look to them. Her work has shown me that beauty can be found in darker subjects, even though they may be hard to look at.
My artwork reflects my love for finding beauty in oddities and my need to have some sense of control, whether it is through having precision when carving a matrix for a print or finding purpose for each segment of a mixed media piece. Finding ways to bring nightmares or dream-like ideas to life is what I strive for with my art. I find comfort in the darker side of life, and I want to show that macabre can be unsettling but also beautiful in the process. My collection of artworks is important because it brings up an unsettling emotion that most people would have by being afraid of what lurks in the dark, whether it’s in a nightmare, one’s own mental health, or even life experiences, and it brings beauty to these ideas that wouldn’t be admired right away. I have not yet exhausted the idea of the dark and macabre, and I plan to expand on this theme as I mature as an artist.
