The first two paintings are "golden oldies", paintings done in the period where I was just starting to work with my dreams and started my road on the lucid dreaming path. As the years pass, I see different things in the paintings than I did when I painted them. They still hold wonder for me, and I feel I will discover more about them in the future.
"Bringing grandpa Soup"
watercolor/ecoline on canvas
29 september 1994
This was actually a painting I observed in the dream. It depicted a girl who brings soup to her grandfather. While the girl was going up the stairs to bring the bowl of soup to her grandfather, colored bubbles floated out of the soup. Inside the bubbles were images of the next scenes. 1. grandpa wakes up, 2. grandpa yells for soup. 3. grandpa waits. 4. grandpa looks to the right. 5. image of the bowl of soup. 6. grandpa takes soup. 7. grandpa eats soup. In the dream I found this such a genious painting because it brought together two realities. I tried to re-create the painting in waking life. I wasn't able to bring the detailed images of the grandfather into the bubbles, so I only painted the bubbles.
"The orange monster and the blue wand"
acrylic on canvas
24 october 1994
This painting is one of a very complicated dream story, which felt very powerful. Because the dream was so complicated I wanted to paint the dream to somehow catch the meaning.
Short summary of the dream: I was watching a documentary and was at the same time participating. The story was of a sad orange "gorilla" that was under the control of a boy and his girlfriend. They used a blue "wand" to control him. The monster asked me to save him, which I did by thinking up an elaborate scheme which involved winning the trust of his girlfriend and then stealing the blue wand so the monster would be free. It was in fact a very sweet monster, only very sad. At one point in the dream I was suddenly in a landscape with a long stairway. On the stairway were shining white persons, beaconing me, almost sending some kind of support. This felt very powerful.
Somehow these scenes weaved all together became this painting.
"Annette"
acrylic on canvas
1999
This painting I included because it is the only painted portrait I have ever done of a person from my dreams. Sure, I have done sketches here and there in my dream journals, and quick paintings on other material, but this one is a real portrait I sat down to paint. And she even posed for me too.
In my first years of lucid dream exploration one of my goals was to find my spirit guide. I had several lucid dreams where I asked inhabitants of my dreamworld wether they were my spirit guide. Some evaded the Question, others said they were, but turned out not to be. Until I had this dream.
I am in my childhood home and remember my Quest to ask for my spirit guide. I say outl oud that I would like to meet my spirit guide. "Do I have a guide? Can I see you?" In the living room I find 3 ladies sitting on the couch. I ask them wether they are my spirit guide. No, they say.
I walk out into the garden, to the lawn, in the meantime asking:"Do I have a spirit guide? Can I see you? I would really like to see you." Then I see somebody. She wears a kind of jute orange dress. She has blue big beaded necklaces around her neck. Her hair is short and blond. Her age is about 40 or 50? She looks Dutch.
"So you are my guide?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
"Annette."
That was how I first met Annette. Later I ask to see her again in a lucid dream, because I wanted very much to paint her. I saw her and I only looked, looked, looked at her. When I woke up I painted her. She looked different than the first time I met her.
Annette turns up in my lucid dreams now and then and I'm then always so glad to see her.
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