about the Dreams series

At the end of the ‘Veils Suite’ series of prints, I created some prints called ‘Child’s Play’ and ‘Child’s Dream’, based on an actual dream I had.

In this dream, my little daughter danced happily into our bedroom early one morning, waking us up. She was in a ‘dress-up’ costume with a sheer veil over her head, like a bride. It was a very vivid image and a rare experience for me to be able to recall a dream so clearly, perhaps because I really did wake up then, fully expecting to see my veiled girl in the room. The titles reflect the make-believe dreams that children act out in their play.

The print ‘Untitled (Dream Passages)’ is a later development of ‘Child’s Dream’ and became a transitional piece between the two series. From these works grew a desire to continue to explore the concepts of dreams and memory, as I was at that time caring for my father in his last years. He was living with us, missing my mother greatly after she passed on, and had health problems that affected his memory. His confusions about past and present and his mixing of dreams and reality really made me aware about how much our memory and even our dreams make up our unique personalities, and how we function in day-to-day life.

November 3, 2004 in Dreams, Printworks by Marja-Leena