23rd and 24th February

My dreams these nights were both ridiculously intricate and long and they're just random images in my head now so I'll just bullet point some key facts from both of them (as they were kind of similar too)

• There was a church in both of them and I was inside the church
• One I was doing a murder mystery with friends which took place in a church, supermarket and the school.
• The other I was exploring an old church and I remember long winding stairs and a suit of armour. 
• After the church I went to school, I was late
• Somebody's dog had died the night before 
• I was painting all day. I think I was painting things related to this topic.

Today I'm going to make a mindmap of all the dreams I've had, including some of the meanings and see what I can come up with. 

21st February

Had two dreams last night.

Dream number 1 I was trapped in my bedroom with the blinds gone and metal bars in their place and it was like I was in a zoo and people kept stopping outside and looking in and I felt very humiliated.

Dream number 2 was more fun. There was some kind of festival in town and everybody was all dressed up and my friends and I were dressed up as princesses. I had tattoos again and we were sitting under these big canopies eating together and then we went on a bouncy castle. Fun.

20th February

Dreams have been escaping me recently! Last nights is there, but barely.

• I was at my grandma's house and there were a lot of ferrets just running about the place so I decided to leave.
• Went to the fairground.
• I was watching the carousel and realised the horses were real and looked in a lot of pain so I set them free (how?) and they all flew away one by one.

I've started doing artist samples and I'm really pleased with how they've been turning out! I've also been collecting primary and secondary images and I just have loads of ideas in my head of what I want to do, I need to start getting them down on paper! 

16th & 17th February

I completely forgot to write these dreams up but I did make a note in my phone of what I remembered most, so here they are:

• I was made to play violin in the school orchestra
• I got distracted by a puppy on the way to the performance.

My dream from Friday night was quite sinister and I again woke up rather panicked.

• My parents were away and I was staying in a hotel by myself. They had warned me not to go back to the house.
• I went back to the house
• Over the course of three days, body parts appeared through the letter box; fingers, ears, you get the idea
• I painted the entire house to keep my mind off it. (Why didn't I call the police or run away?!)
• On the fourth day there was a torso in the hallway. I did run away then.

15th February

After two nights of not remembering anything from my dreams, I had one last night that was extremely vivid. Well, it was more like two actually.

The first consisted of breaking into somebody else's house with a group of people I barely know to use their waterslides. There was a boy there who I realised was my sisters boyfriend (dream boyfriend, it wasn't actually him) and that he was with some other girl in the house so I left to tell my sister that he was cheating on her.

The second was a little more interesting. I was going to a festival but I had to walk there so I set off. I was just walking along my street when I noticed a ballerina dancing in front of me. She was very beautiful and every so often she'd stop at someone's garden to pick a flower. It must have been summer because everybody's garden was full of pretty flower bushes. I was watching the girl when she bent down and took something out of her shoe. She stood back up and flicked her hand so quickly it was a blur and a man at the end of the street suddenly fell to the floor with a slit in his throat. I didn't feel the need to do anything, I just followed the ballerina as she continued along the street. I watched her pounce on a lady walking her dog but then I woke up. Quite strange.

So memorable things from these dreams are breaking and entering, cheating, ballerina, flowers, knife and then watching people get killed by said ballerina I suppose. I don't think I'll be painting exactly that however.

February 12th

Felt very panicky when I woke up from this dream.

I needed to get on a train to get to the gym and it was summer and extremely hot. When I got near the train station I noticed it was very busy and as I ran down the stairs I saw my train pull away. I waited ten minutes for another one in ridiculous heat with people pressing around me from all sides and when I eventually got on a train it was no better. I sat down as the heat was getting too much and noticed a hole in my pants so I stood back up and tried to grab onto a hand rail but some girl put her sweaty hand on top of mine so I jumped off at a station that wasn't even mine.

10th February

I remembered my dream a little better last night and as soon as I woke up I made a little note of major events on my phone.

• I roller-bladed to school (very well, I might add)
• I think it was near the end of the school year because we were all sitting around not doing much talking about going to Edinburgh and the summer, but then the head of sixth form told us we couldn't go away because they had planned a trip for the whole of sixth form
• We went on this trip instead, which was to the beach.
• Because we live in England, it was rainy and blowing a gale but that didn't stop us all riding horseback along the beach for the entire day.

The things that are still sticking out in my mind are the roller blades, beach, and horseback riding. I'll probably record my dreams for another week or so to make sure I definitely have enough to work with and I'm starting to take photos of objects or settings from my dreams so I can start turning them into paintings. :-)

8th and 9th of February

Struggled to remember my dreams for the last two nights, so just some bullet points for now

• I ran a marathon
• Afterwards some boys asked me where my glasses were and I realised I lost them along the way

• I was out with my sister and she threw a spider at me.

These seem ridiculously simple but it's honestly all I can remember from the last two nights!

February 7th

I really don't remember much of this dream, except that I was trapped in a weird old house with some friends and there were strange little baby sprite kind of things who latched on to women and never let go, feeding off their blood I think. Tried to escape little sprite things and ended up in a room where a really frail elderly man was sat in a rocking chair and we tried to help him but as soon as we touched him he kind of disintegrated into petals.

That's all I can remember from a very long and warped dream.

Dream Meanings

Dream meanings

Snow – clean start, fresh perspective, indifference, loneliness, neglect

Pull ups – a difficult situation you need to overcome or rise above

Tap dancing – indicates the need to keep up in life for fear of being left behind.

Tattoo – sense of individuality and desire to stand out in the crowd. Alternately, a decision or experience has left a longer lasting effect on you that you didn’t expect.

Party – need to get out and enjoy yourself more

Barley – signifies good health, progress and satisfaction in your life

Fields – freedom and happiness, going through a period of personal growth

Avocado – signifies you will be rewarded if you devote some time and effort to a goal or project (I like this one!)

Steak – trust or utilise your instincts more or you are getting to the heart of something

Running but not moving as fast as you’d like represents lack of self confidence

Bench – reflects your tendency to procrastinate or push things to the side (oops)

Bear – bears represent independence, strength, death and renewal (or resurrection). Bears are the cycle of life in dreams.

Sandwich – suggests the pressure being put on you in life (yes! Trying to get good grades to get into uni is very pressuring and stressful)

Boy – if you are female and dream you are a boy it means you are developing masculine aspects of character (cue gym comments).

Sea 
To see the sea in your dream represents your subconscious and the transition between your subconscious and conscious.

I thought this was strange as it was one of the first dreams I had after deciding on my project and it basically explains what I want to do in this project!

Sorry for the note form but I didn’t feel the need to write them up properly as I’ll be turning some of these into art anyway. I’ll carry on recording and interpreting my dreams for more inspiration, but so far I really like the sea, boy, bear and field interpretations and I have some ideas for how to illustrate them!

February 6th

More confusing dreams. I'm hoping they'll settle down soon but I haven't been sleeping very well lately. Fingers crossed I'll soon return back to "normal".

Okay so dream 1:

• It snowed again and the teachers at school decided it should be students who shovel the snow away from the buildings.
• We shovelled, they watched and kept making up odd little tasks for us to do, as if shovelling a foot of snow wasn't enough. Mine included:

1. Learn how to do a handstand for a minute
2. Ten pull ups (I've recently learned I can't do pull ups)
3. Bench press
4. Learn to tap dance.

Most memorable thing(s) - snow, pull ups, headstand (upside down?)

The wind then woke me up by rudely knocking a bin over so that dream was interrupted. Once I managed to fall back asleep, this happened:

• I went to a party, I think it might have been a new year's party.
• I got a tattoo - uh oh.
• I decided it'd be a good idea to walk home and somehow didn't get home for three days.
• My mother saw my tattoo and stopped talking to me (I don't blame her, it wasn't a great tattoo - just a huge tribal all over my arm)
• Went downstairs for dinner and during my absence my step-dad had bought a field, a combined harvester and some other farming supplies and decided we were only going to eat fresh, home-grown produce from now on.
• This would have been fine by me except the only things he was growing were tomatoes, barley and rosemary.
• We had barley and tomato soup for dinner.
• My tattoo turned out to be temporary as half of it peeled off at the table.

Most memorable thing(s) - tattoo (temporary), barley, field, party. 

I think tonight or tomorrow I'm going to start looking up some meanings to the most significant objects in my dreams lately. I've already started taking some photos for a Dream Inventory (something the artist Jane Gifford created using little paintings).

February 5th

My dream last night seemed to last forever but essentially was very simple.

• It was Valentine's day so I was planning on having a heart shaped steak for dinner.
• Lots of angry vegans showed up apparently just out of nowhere at my house.
• I ate about ten avocados instead to keep them happy.

That's pretty much it. In my compositions I wanted to include literal paintings or photographs of my dreams but then also any interesting meanings behind them, but I don't think any dream interpretation website will know what to do with "heart shaped steak and avocados". We'll see.

February 4th

Last night I only slept for around 2 hours through the whole night and what dreams I did have were hugely disorientating with lots of flashing colours and sounds. I had been reading Io Non Ho Paura before I went to bed and I basically dreamed out a section from the book, in Italian and all. Whether the Italian was correct is a whole different story but in my dream I knew it was in Italian.

The only real thing I can remember is that the story of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany was prominent, something the protagonist of the book also has a dream about after seeing a body in a hole in the ground. No real images or faces, just the notion of the story floating around my head. 

I've been thinking about whether I want to change my question to Layers so that I can focus more exactly on dreams and what they could mean, through saying Explore the layers of my subconscious. I'm not entirely sure yet though.  

Dream from February 3rd

Last night's dream was actually pretty straightforward and a little dull.

It was a Monday morning and all the snow was back. I was walked to school but when I got there, Beth (friend who does media at school) told me we were supposed to be filming for her music video that day and that I was dressed all wrong and my hair wasn't right. I apologised and tried to run back home to get my stuff but as I was running I wasn't actually getting anywhere.

I hate that type of dream running, it makes me feel so helpless. Thankfully I wasn't being chased by anyone or anything, just being waited on by an angry Beth.

Jane Gifford created a Dream Inventory featuring one or two items that she remembered most vividly from her dreams so at the end of each post I'll try and come up with one of two single objects. Today's would have to be my black Dr. Martens. I was very aware that I was wearing these as I tried to run through the snow.

Dreams from the 1st/2nd of February

My dreams are always really long, warped and more than a little confusing so if I feel they're too long to write down in a narrative form, I'll just write it up in bullet points.

The first dream I had last night I think I'll just bullet point.

• Driving along a coastal road with the sea on one side and lots of little beach huts on the other. I felt very calm.
• Someone (not entirely sure who was driving) dropped me off in the middle of a forest where there was nothing but a picnic bench which I sat down on. I had the feeling I was waiting for someone, maybe my dad. 
• After sitting hunched over on the bench for a while my phone buzzed. As I was looking at my phone, there was a lot of red around me and it was like I was surrounded by apples.
• I had an email and it was from UCAS telling me I'd received an offer from Durham university. Obviously happy feelings. 

Most memorable thing(s) - Picnic bench, ocean. 

I woke up after this dream at about 5am but stayed in that strange state where you think you're awake but still actually are half asleep. I then dozed off again and had two more dreams.

Dream 2:

• Volunteering in a charity shop (I have done this in the past) 
• Went out to get some lunch from what I thought was Greggs but turned out to actually be the canteen from school. I asked for a chicken burger but when I got back to the shop and had a look inside it was a bright pink synthetic burger made from goodness knows what. I then declared I'd eat nothing but fruit and vegetables for the rest of my life.
• I threw the burger on the floor which attracted a lot of bears. (Who knew England had so many bears roaming around?)
• I befriended the bears through a kind of telepathic link and the rest of the dream was basically just me cuddling bears... I did mention my dreams are odd. 

Most memorable thing(s) - bears, sandwich, Greggs. 

Dream 3:

• I'm pretty sure this dream was from the perspective of a boy.
• I was riding a quad bike with an extremely drunk girl on the back of it.
• Managed to navigate motorways but had some serious trouble steering and then one I got back to a very muddy dirt track road there were loads of other boys waiting to high 5 me on the side.
• I didn't brake very gracefully and fell off the bike with the girl still clinging to the back of me.
• The girl then proceeded to be very sick, thankfully none of it hit me.

Most memorable things - Quad bike. 

So those are my dreams from the night of February 1st/2nd and I think I'll make a post later maybe pulling out the most important details and using a dream meanings website, although I won't look too far into it as I want the art I create to be true to the actual dream world, not the meanings of the dreams.

I also think I ought to explain the question I have chosen.

I chose Transformation which was probably the broadest question on the paper. After seeing the Jim Shaw at the Baltic, I was intrigued by his selection of Dream Drawings which are exactly as the name suggests: detailed pencilled drawings of whatever his subconscious came up with that night. Unfortunately, none of the questions on the paper were specifically related to dreams or mentioned dreams in the description but after brainstorming, I decided that with Transformation I could make it fit, as I'd be recording my dreams every morning (or what I remember of them, as does Jane Gifford) and then transforming these flashes of dream into art. 

We also discussed perhaps choosing Relationships and exploring the relationship between my subconscious and the real world, or Layers and delving into the different layers of my dream world. At this stage in the project I don't need to have made a concrete decision and I do like the idea of Layers but for now I'm sticking with Transformation.

Beginnings

Okay so I thought I'd create a little blog so I have somewhere to keep all of my dreams in one place. I might also include some thoughts about my art project and where I'd like to go with it. I'll probably also update it with photos from my sketchbook and photos of things from my dreams (If they aren't too obscure or weird).