Carole Lindberg – Four Images

Hippocampus

Pencil on paper, intervention with computer graphics for color, 2010

This drawing was the result of a personal experiment to create a drawing by dreaming the imagery and recording it. The unfinished drawing and documentation was published in The Lucid Dream Exchange in 2010.  To summarize, I began the drawing, and would incubate dreams to find the imagery. This includes the jigsaw background with numbers (ordinary dream), additions of strips of paper to extend the imagery (saw what to do in lucid dream), addition of thistle imagery (saw this in lucid dream in completion), shades of blue and red done through computer (which colors I still don't agree with but were dictated by the dream) and a lengthy dialogue in a lucid dream about working in computer graphics in the future. I was resistant to this idea, but have learned this art since, and created serious imagery by computer. I saw this entire process many times in high resolution photographic detail in these lucid dreams.

It is a year since I finished the Hippocampus drawing experiment, so it might be interesting to report the results of following the advice of the Inner Self. I spent about 3 months in intense study to learn computer graphics. This was self teaching with books and some emergency calls to friends. I met extreme resistance from some people very close to me, who felt I had "sold out" and gone commercial and was doing what everyone else was doing. This was unnerving, because it was one of the reasons I had not wanted to step outside my comfort zone of drawing and painting and occasional assemblage. I developed a kind of war cry, basically, "Let me follow my own process, I don't know where anything is going, but knowledge and new skills are always useful."

After I got past the learning stage and defending my right-to-explore stage with well meaning friends, some very important changes happened and continue to open up in my work.  These are: (1) I, myself, was able to prepare select favorite art pieces for high quality digital print editions. (2) I bought a camera and began to constantly take pictures of eveything I come across. My personal imagery opened up and new ideas are pouring in, ending a creative dry spell. (3) Just by zooming in and out in size with digital imagery, I unwittingly trained my eyes to really see detail in all of its nuances. Since I am a detail freak in my art work, I am really happy about this. (4) I have created a few completely digitalized works I am really pleased with, even though I am still learning.  The Muse is one. These pieces actually brought me back to my oil painting, which is now becoming extremely hyperreal, a place I wanted to go, but didn't know how to access.

I know one of the very important functions of dream research is to be able to find transformative, beneficial functions as a result of dreaming. And it is definitely of interest to me to go beyond the personal limits that one sets up for oneself habitually in the physical world.

Nocturnal Voyage

Oil painting, 1989

I am including this image painted in 1989, because it has never been published for a dreaming  audience. At the time that I painted it, I did not know my nocturnal awakenings were really night terrors. I would awaken many times a night, see entities on my bed or suspended in the room, as well as experience many other kinds of nocturnal manifestations. I made many drawings and paintings on this theme over the years. In this painting I intended to create an atmosphere of moving and unstable images: the lifting and dissolving floor, the figure rowing itself through a fluid medium of space.

I am a Dream and So are You

Pencil on paper, around 1985

This drawing was created the day after my very  first lucid dream. In the LD, I find myself on the back of a giant. In confusion and amazement I ask what is going on. The giant answers "I am a dream, and so are you." Lucid dream collapses.

The Muse

Computer graphics, 2011

I wanted to create a piece that would include some of my most common dream themes from my dream journal. Those are mysterious ancient buildings, elaborate ornamental designs, often celtic, and the playing of musical instruments–usually violin. I developed these themes into a new context. But the other important reason I would call this dream art is, as explained in the Hippocampus artwork, I was directed to learn computer graphics during a long lucid dream dialogue with my inner self. Here is my most recent result.

Copyright 2011: All work contained herein is protected by copyright. Neither words nor images may be used, copied, transmitted or reproduced in whole or in part in any form nor may they or any part thereof be stored in a retrieval system of any nature without written permission of the artist.