MY DREAMS & SELF PORTRAITURE

Since I was a child, I have always had very vivid dreams. I have many memories of dreams, some dreams from many many years ago still haunt me. Growing up, I have always been very intrigued by the supernatural, horror has always been a love of mine and I often fill my mind with stories of ghosts and demons. Nightmares are my favourite kind of dream, the feeling of terror brings excitement and upon waking I feel very much inspired. I guess my own dream world is the main motivation and inspiration behind this project. 

My most vivid dream memory is being chased by a gigantic emerald green snake. Snakes are my biggest fear. They always slither into my dreams and terrify me. I have not questioned the meaning of these dreams until I began this project, dream dictionary gives a plethora of explanations such as running away from emotions or dealing with intimidating situations. However, the explanation that I am most drawn to is the symbolism of transformation - snakes shed their skin. I feel that especially during the last couple years and throughout this project I have transformed not only as a make-up artist but also as an artist. 

For the last character of my Phantasia series, I want to create a series of self portraits reflecting on my personal dreams - the idea of incorporating the self into my work is inspired by the art of Cristina Francov which I have talk about one of my previous posts. I think that concluding the exhibition with a personal message will create a personal connection between the viewer and the artist. 

In a subtle way, I plan to use the theme of snakes - I will become the snake who sheds skin and transforms. 

Mood board of lighting, colour and beauty inspiration.

For styling, I am thinking of wearing a emerald green cheongsam - a tight traditional Chinese dress. The sheen and pattern of the dress can resemble the skin of a snake from a distance.

DREAM AND MADNESS

Interesting read, the comparison between dream and madness:

The dream-like character of madness is one of the constant themes of the classical age. Melancholy and dreams have the same origin, and have equal value in relation to truth. There are ‘natural dreams’ that represent, in the waking state, things that have passed through the senses or through the understanding, but which are altered by the subject’s temperament. A different form of melancholy has its origins in supernatural intervention, the same force that brings dreams that foretell the future to the mind of the dreams, announcing events and causing him to see strange things.

Dreams and madness reveal themselves to be made of the same substance.

In the first moments of sleep, the vapors that rise up from the body to the head are multiple, turbulent and dense. They are so dark that they provoke no images in the mind, but their turbulence brings disorder to the nerves and muscles. The vapors rising up to the brain begins to clear and at this point fantastical dreams begin, containing miracles and countless impossible things.  Finally the agitation of the vapors is calmed entirely and the sleeper begins to see things more clearly. Through the transparent, now limpid vapors, memories of the previous day appear, representing the world as is really was, with perhaps a small number of metamorphoses. There is a constant analogy to be found between the progressive developments of sleep, and what each stage brings to the quality of the imagination, and different forms of madness, because the mechanisms are shared. Both involve the same movement of vapors and the animal spirits, the dame liberation of images, the same correspondence between the physical qualities of phenomena and the psychological or moral value of sentiments. What is important in Zacchias’* analysis is that madness is not compared to dreams in their positive phenomena, but rather to the totality formed by sleep and dreams, i.e. to an ensemble that includes images, fantasies, memories and predictions, as well as the great void of sleep, the night of the senses, and the whole negativity that separates man from his waking state and the concomitant truth of the senses. While tradition was content to compare the delirium of the man and the vividness of dream images, the classical age assimilates delirium to the indissoluble nexus of the image and the night of the spirit against which it gains its freedom. That whole, transported in its entirely to the waking state, is what constituted madness. That is the manner in which the definitions of madness that obstinately return in the classical age should be understood. The dream, as a complex figure of the image and of sleep, is almost invariable present. Either in a negative manner, as when the notion of waking is all that distinguishes a madman from a man asleep, or in a positive manner, as when delirium is defined as a modality of dream, with waking being the specific difference: ‘Delirium' is the dream of waking persons. The ancient idea that dreams are a transitory form of madness is reversed. It is no longer dreams that borrow their worrying power from madness, thereby showing how much reason is fragile or limited, but madness that takes is fundamental nature from dream, demonstrating by that similarity that is a liberation of the image in the night of the real.  

Michel Foucault, 1961 (pg. 238 – 240)

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* Zacchias - an Italian physician, teacher of medical science, medio-legal jurist, philosopher, and poet.


Foucault M, History of Madness 1961, Routledge

MADNESS KEEPS US SANE

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity 

- Edgar Allen Poe

Dreams are mad. Our dream world is out of our control, the emotions that we experience in waking life dictates the dreams that we have. Rage, pain, grief, jealousy, all negative emotions that are suppressed in waking life are released in dream. Dangerous, even murderous dreams relieve these emotions that taunt us in reality. 

Damage - Edyta Jermacz 

ORIENTAL THEME: A CREATOR'S SIGNATURE

Throughout the development of this project so far, I have noticed that there has been an oriental feel running throughout the images, some more subtle than the others. I guess I added oriental elements within my work without too much thought because it is like a creator's signature. Although this was not an idea that I had at the beginning of this project, I plan to expand on this idea for my last two remaining characters.

DEVIL IN THE ROOM

I found another disturbing short film based around sleep paralysis...

Devil In The Room is a mixed-media short film about sleep paralysis, which was completed in May 2013. The film uses stop motion animation, live action film and projection mapping techniques to evoke and explore the worlds experienced between sleeping and waking.

'It doesn't matter if i'm not real, what matters is that I feel real.' 

VISITATION DREAM: CHARACTER DESIGN

Since my project is centred around darker dreams, my dream character for this series of images will resemble a vengeful spirit with sinister intentions - she is a deceased lover of someone who is still living, one who contradicts the phrase till death do us part. The series of images that I will create can be described as a twisted love story. As discussed in the previous post, this series is inspired by Edith's Warton's Pomegranate Seed. 

Red will be used as a symbolic colour. Red is a colour which symbolises love and romance, rage and anger, blood and malice - all the emotions this character is to portray.

For the makeup, I was inspired by the ghostly character designs from Guillermo Del Toro films such as the Devils Backbone (2001) and Crimson Peak (2016) where blood flows down along the natural contours of the face but leaving some to defy gravity by flowing upwards giving it a supernatural effect. I wanted to create intricate details around the eyes to imitate the pattern of lace but also cracks and veins. I chose a model with blue eyes so that the eyes really stand out from the makeup. 

Designing the hair is always a challenge. For this shoot I have decided to give the model big blonde hair with curls that imitate unravelled 1930s hair to give softness to the harshness of the look but to also to create a more historical look.

 I have decided to use wigs for all my images because using the model's real hair really limits colour, length and volume. By styling wigs ready for each shoot I am able to drastically transform the model and it drastically saves time when getting the model through hair and makeup.  

INSPIRATION: CRISTINA FRANCOV

My work started as a worldly extension of my dreams. I wanted that exquisite context in which dreams unfold to be, somehow, relished by the senses beyond my own imagination only. Growing up, I realized dreams flashed small centrifugal shards of my persona, the universe and all of it encompassed symbols open to personal conclusions stemming from brief events, oftentimes imperceptible to myself and the world at large. As if it almost were a cryptic game of questions and answers.

And so I assumed dreams and symbolic manifestations to be coded messages that, when translated into images, could establish themselves as obvious but never simple links straight to the anima and spirit of the beholder (and my own). I worked on my dreams as I worked on myself; trained my hand and tied it to my mind in an effort to lift off the chains of reason and sense; opposite actions that I hoped would someday teach me a way of materializing all of that which floated in rather ethereal and cosmogonic forms.

 - Cristina Francov 

Cristina Francov is an artist who gives life to her characters using experimental digital photography and mixed media through self-portraiture.

Sphynx

Spirits Weaving a Nexus 

In the painting, Spirits Weaving a Nexus, two otherworldly women weave the dream of a sleeping woman. Not only does Francov personify the dream process, she also shows a relationship between the ethereal and physical realm, both of which operate with conscious intelligent intention. What some might consider balance between the light and the dark, or the above and the below, or the right hand path and the left hand path, good and bad, male and female, might also be thought of as suspension. (Beautiful Bazaar Mag, 2014)  

To Keep You Alive

I Shall Never Forgive You 

In paintings such as Nunca te voy a perdonar (I Shall Never Forgive You) or El banquete magnetic (The Magnetic Banquet) spirits hover above sleeping persons. The dream state in which the person lies is manifested by the spirit floating above them.

The Magnetic Banquet

Introspection Whilst Dreaming

The works of Cristina Francov are dark but brilliant in colour, dreamlike in the way refined images dissolve into washes of colours. Cristina is a realist of cerebral abstraction. Surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, and symbolism are all infused within her style. She generates psychological and spiritual archetypes into modern forms through photography, photo manipulation, painting, and drawing. 

Francov's work is unnerving and portrays the terrors of dream which is haunting yet beautiful. The discovery of this artist's work has inspired me to perhaps experiment with mixed media and to create portraits that appear almost like paintings for I have always found realistic portraits frightening. Perhaps, I could also incorporate myself as one of the dream characters as this would give the exhibition a personal touch. 

The Commitment

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Artist's Gallery:

http://www.cristinafrancov.com/en-index.html

Beautiful Bazaar Article:

https://beautifulbizarre.net/2014/12/04/deconstructing-shadow-self-cristina-francov/