Barbara Herbin*
Medium: Poster paints
Date: 17/9/2008
Created: 9/9/08
I am in a bookshop which also sells greetings cards and maybe things from an exhibition that I have been to see earlier on. I am looking at some cards displayed in rows on a small shelving unit (the kind that would be used for leaflets). Nearby, to my left is a wooden staircase leading up. It has an old fashioned, polished wooden banister on the right hand side and to the left side is the wall. The staircase bends round to the right after one flight of stairs. A little boy, a toddler, keeps sliding down the banister on this last flight of stairs. Hanging above the hand rail is a balloon on a string, suspended in the air, so the balloon is near the ceiling. He slides down fast and ends up in a heap on the floor. He does this several times and I feel slightly alarmed and concerned that he might hurt himself, though he seems okay.
I overhear or am being told about a woman who has disappeared. Her name is Rosemary or Rosamund (I think the latter) and she was with her little girl before she left. This child is in the shop now, next to me. This woman just walked out on her family and disappeared, no one knows where she has gone. I take the little girl and we go outside, I think I am taking her home. I ask to hold her hand and she does this quite trustingly. She doesn't know me but seems willing to go off with me and hold my hand. She is aged between five and seven. We walk past several shops with fairly large glass windows. As we walk past one shop she sees one of her school friends, another girl inside. I ask if she wants to go in and talk to her as we aren’t in a hurry. We go inside and she greets this school friend and they chat. I talk to the child’s mother and tell her about this woman's disappearance. Afterwards I wonder if I have been indiscreet, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but it s too late now, I’ve told her. Still in the shop, I am talking and involved with some other people - all connected to the mothers disappearance. They are all concerned about it.
Then we are all going up a spiraling staircase together - unclear where only that’s it’s inside (shop or home??). This is connected to her disappearing as well. We walk up and round the staircase. It feels claustrophobic, everything feels very much in my face - right in front of me with hardly any space. I seem to be at the very front of this party as well. As we walk up I see various works of art which just appear in front of me. There’s a very elaborate African sculpture of a seated figure, which reminds me of the art of Benin - bodies with scarification marks - raised bumps. I like this and impressed to find such things here. As we continue up we see various works of art like this. As we get nearer to the top I see a large, rectangular panel made of metal but with figures in relief on it. Again its West African. The top part of this panel shines as if a white light is reflected off it and the whole thing is a platinum - silvery grey color. I look at the figures an! d admire them and think there is some very interesting African artwork here. It’s all old, traditional work. Then when we get to the top, it feels even more claustrophobic. I am at the head and right in front of my face at the top of the stairs is a book. It’s a long book - rather like a visitors book in shape. This is full of handwriting, in blue ink, a kind of diary perhaps, or a place where people write comments. There are various entries and I turn the pages and see this woman's husband has written down the date she disappeared. We go through this diary to try and get some clue about why and where this woman has gone. It feels very claustrophobic, like going inside the body and getting deeper and deeper. Everything is tight and right in your face, there’s no escape, you can’t move and go anywhere else. I find the handwriting difficult to read, other people seem to find it easier to read than I do. The husband of this woman is upper class, tall, slim, with dark h! air. He seems to have accepted her disappearance reasonably calmly and I wonder how happy their marriage was and how the situation was between them before she left.
1) Benin Panel - two guards
I started by drawing the strongest image - that of the African metal panel with the raised figures. The figures were unclear in the dream - the strongest impression was of the colour and the shining patch at the top left hand corner. It felt good to work with this colour. I painted two guards with distinctive helmets - pointed and high with a nose cover coming down over the face. They were holding spears and I felt they were palace guards. Then I drew a basket to one side - this seemed to be what they were guarding. I felt that there was a woman inside, though dismissed this thought as silly - how could a woman fit in here? The basket felt like a prison with bars, so I decided to paint the basket and see if any more information came up about it and what it was.
Second picture in this series
2) Freeing the feminine
I painted the basket and had a sense of a genie or spirit coming out of it. I drew grey wispy smoke or flame shapes coming out of the top with a stronger abstract curved form in the middle . I knew this was the feminine who had now been released from this basket/prison and this figure must be silver. There was a sense of release - that the feminine spirit had been freed after having been contained, guarded and imprisoned.
Third picture in this series:
3) Feminine spirit
I painted the feminine spirit. She was an abstract form in silver - like the old earth goddess statues. Then I saw red petals on her middle so painted those in. Next there were some white lotus like shapes - flowers scattered about amongst the red petals. I accidentally spilt some white paint on the side of the paper so I painted that over in a very pale pink. Then I saw a red outline around the silver shape so I had to paint that in. The outline grew to fill the rest of the page and became the red background. The red reminded me of the birth process.
Detail of Freeing the Feminine
Feminine Spirit Shines
Also the same picture but you can see how the silver paint shines.
As a result of the artwork I felt that the feminine spirit had been freed, that somehow it has been imprisoned before (feeling of claustrophobia) and was now released - Rosamund walking out?
I have found artwork to be a very powerful way of working directly with the energy contained in
dream symbols. I start with an image or symbol from the dream and paint this but then continue on to do a series, working spontaneously and painting whatever comes to mind. The end result feels like a process of transformation, energies have been freed on some level. Sometime is have insights that I can put into words, at other times I cannot explain what has happened but feel nevertheless that a shift has occurred by doing the artwork.
Anyone can work this way, you do not need to be an artist and I would encourage people to use paints and pencils rather than computer generated images to work with their dreams dream symbols.
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