Dreamscape

"Summertime"
Prints are available from my ImageKind Gallery

dream•scape
Pronunciation: (drēm'skāp"),
—n.
1. a dreamlike, often surrealistic scene.
2. a painting depicting such a scene.

I've always had the desire to transfer my inner images onto sheets of paper. That's why I've kept on painting day after day since my childhood. But it is easier said than done. I have to admit that most of the time, the pictures I painted were nowhere near the images I had in my mind. Colours were too bright, too vivid, too dark or too murky, the edges were too sharp or too blurry, etc... In short, I could never satisfied with the techniques I used with my paintings.
I often thought that I would never be able to recreate my "dreamscapes".

Then, one day, the idea of using photographs to represent my version of the world came to me. First I took the photograph with the finished image in my mind, and then, painted over it. This worked amazingly well. I was so excited! Two of my favourite things, photography and painting, combined together and managed to achieve the result I've always wanted!

The gallery I have on ImageKind is more or less dedicated to these dreamscape images. These series of landscapes are dreamy and surreal. These are to reflect my own inner world, so they make sense to me but not necessarily to you ;-)

I just hope that somebody, somewhere, loves these dreamy scenes as much as I do :-)

Fairies

"Fairy Land"

If you'd like to see a bigger image, please visit my ImageKind gallery.

Prints are also available in different sizes.



"Fairy Land" Details

A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

-- William Shakespeare --

I've always had a great interest in fairies since I was a little girl.
I was so fascinated by the idea of these tiny, winged people living in the woods and meadows, giving locals some joys and troubles. I read many, many books about fairies and little people and dreamt about seeing them one day.

I think I was 10 years old or so then. One afternoon, I came home from school and rushed out again to the nearby woods. There, among the tall trees, was a little patch of clearing and a stream, and this had been my favourite secret place for months. I'd never seen anybody there. It always had been so quiet and somewhat magical, but especially this particular afternoon, the air was filled with something so special. The clearing was covered with white star-shaped flowers, which I could recognized as a well sought after medicinal plant, I started gathering some for my grandmother.

While I was wading through a mass of flowers to pick the very best ones, something flew right into my sight. As I fell back and looked up, I saw a tiny light hovering in the air. First, I thought it was a bug. But then looked closely, I realized it had no wings or body or anything. Just a tiny white-blue light there. The radiating light was only 1cm or so in diameter, swaying one side to another, then suddenly moved right toward me. It stopped at about 20cm away from me, hovered there for a few seconds, and then as suddenly as it appeared, it flew away into the sky and disappeared.

I looked everywhere in the clearing and in the woods all afternoon to find the blue light again, but all to no avail. After the encounter, I went back to the place almost daily, but I never saw it again.

It was nothing like the fairies I saw in the books, but I believed it to be one of them. Years and decades passed, and I still don't know what it was.
Sometimes, very strange things happen in the woods...

Connecting To My Creativity

The print of this image is available from my ImageKind Gallery.

Sometimes I do get discouraged and depressed by my poor ability to express my inner visions. I get so frustrated by my lack of skills to bring the image in my mind into a physical form. But the worth thing happened to me in the last 2 years. I couldn't connect to my creativity.

When I was younger and free, I never felt there was a limit to my imagination. That time, my only limitation was my skills and experiences. I'd never imagined that I'd ever get to the stage where my imagination and creativity dry out - but it happened.

Everybody, or almost everybody goes through a certain time in his life with difficulties and challenges. I'm no exception to this. The past 2 years has been a very challenging time for me and my husband. To tell the truth, I'd been through even more difficult time in the past, but this time, something was not quite the same. Somehow, I managed to loose some of the precious qualities of myself - imagination and creativity. Feeling so tired and stressed out all the time, I kept ignoring my urge to paint and photograph something I REALLY wanted, not the sort of things I commissioned to do, and one day, I suddenly realized that I had been hushing the little cry inside me too long. When I sat in front of a blank canvas, I couldn't find anything I wanted to paint. Took my camera and rushed outside, I couldn't find anything attractive. Everything around me looked so dull and lifeless.

It felt like hell. Cried, cried and cried. For months on end, I tried to bring back my lost self, but whatever I did, nothing really worked. One day in April, when I was feeling completely drained, a book jumped into my sight out of our bookshelf. I picked up the book, "To Honor the Earth", for the first time in years. I opened it to the page with my favorite photograph of trees standing in the morning mist. I started reading the message written on the page opposite. This message from a realm beyond our physical reality truly sank into my heart then.

On a rainy day you can appreciate the good in the weather and act in a way that is appropriate to it. Always look for and find the unique flavor of each moment and each place you find yourself in, not wishing for something different. You would be amazed if you could see what a difference this makes to the life forces. Each moment has its own beauty, but it can be nullified if you resist the flow and put yourself out of harmony with it. To go with the natural rhythms is far more important than you realize. Inspiration comes on all levels when you are relaxed in the flow of life.
-- Landscape Angel --

I cannot say what exactly, but certainly something had happened in me then. My yearning to express myself had come back. My style in art and photography had changed. My obsession toward one particular subject had disappeared.

My rehabilitation to bring back my artistic self has been going on ever since.

(Above image was created in this renewing period. )