Nightmare: Oil Pastel on Black Paper

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This drawing actually has a pretty interesting explanation behind it, and warrants that explanation probably more than most of my drawings.  Let me first say that this drawing was drawn to represent the images and feelings I experienced in a dream.  A rather fun assignment, we were tasked with recording our dreams every morning when we awoke, and were told we would be using those notes to create a drawing that tried to put into visual reality, the content of that dream.  I really liked the idea because I always have very vivid dreams, and there’s not a morning I wake up when I can’t remember what I was dreaming about, so I had a lot of good subjects to choose from.  Ultimately, I settled on this:

In this dream, I was running through a dark and empty cityscape, through buildings and down streets, and looming around every dark corner, there were these enormous dogs made of jade.  Every time I thought I had escaped, another would appear, and so I kept running.  Finally as I began to come into a state of lucidity, realizing to at least some degree that I was in fact dreaming, I decided to take charge of my dream, and face down my tormentors.  So I turned to face the pursuing dog and stood unflinching as it charged toward me, emboldened by the new found knowledge of my invulnerability.  As if my own mind saw that I was beginning to turn the tide of this nightmarish dream, it decided to throw something else in to offset my disregard for my own life, and in an instant, a small baby appeared out of thin air between the rampaging beast and me.  The dog promptly pounced in vicious attack at the child and I leapt onto the dog determined to save the child.  I reached out and grabbed the nearest weapon in the long dark empty hallway which happened to be a heavy glass beer stein (one that I keep on my shelf) and with all my strength I proceeded to smash in the skull of the animal with repeated blows, bringing it to the ground.  As I continued strike the creature I became aware that with each bash, the dog seemed to grow fainter and fainter, until it had disappeared entirely, and I was left holding my glass which was broken, and the baby was lying unharmed on the ground.  I left with a confusing sense that it had all been a hallucination and that none of the dogs had been real in the first place, just a figment of my imagination. 

This piece conveys the feeling and tone of that dream well for me, and I hope it can give at least a sense of the feelings and emotions of that experience to others.  I chose rather than to depict a single image from the dream or try to include all the elements that were a part of the narrative, to instead try to create something that captured the feeling of the dream as a whole.