Dreamscape Final Part*: The Dream, by Nadia Daniels-Moehle. 2019. Gouache and acrylic on paper.

In the dream, I walked across a hall. In the center of the hall was a fountain, turned off because the museum was closed for the night. At the end of the hall, facing me, were nine paintings. And I stared at those paintings until I woke up. That was a few months ago. 

After the dream, I decided I would paint what I had seen. Recalling the colors and feelings and movements, I attempted to capture in the “Dreamscape” series what I had felt in my dream. “Dreamscape” is a collection of nine pieces, each piece illustrating a surreal and dreamlike element. 

Dreams have always been essential to me, and when I was a teenager, I would write down my dreams on sheets of paper I kept under my pillow, trying to capture the other world that felt so real and yet was so hard to grasp. I learned that dreams are perhaps our subconscious trying to make sense of what we experience in waking life. When I was a child, I wondered if dreams were a way aliens attempted to communicate with us, messages translated into images we knew as strange or familiar.

“Dreamscape” is an attempt to capture a dream, translate the dream into something visual, and from something visual, translate the dream to whomever views the pieces. From my experience, dreams and symbolism mean different things to different people: when you look at this series, ask yourself, what does it mean to you?

*Many of the pieces in CognEYEzant:365 are small parts of a larger piece. See it here.

358 days done, 7 to go.