Renee Brown 7/21/23
How Precognitive Dream Directives Affect Art-Making Outcomes
Thesis for MFA
Master of Fine Art ( art research)
Transart Creative Arts Institute &
Liverpool John Moore's University
Renee Brown, 2023
Acknowledgement
I would like to start by thanking my advisors, Dr. Michael Bowdidge, who introduced me to JW Dunne's work and provided me with new research knowledge, and Dr. Tracy Benson, who was a huge help to me with the structure and design of this thesis.
Special regards to my dear husband, who encouraged me and allowed me to conduct countless hours of research, and my children and grandchildren, who encouraged me by appreciating my focus.
Finally, I appreciate the very kind staff of Transart Creative Art Institute and Liverpool John Moore's University for their support and enabling environment for my research.
Abstract
My art praxis stands at the intersection of art and dream analysis. This paper examines my approach to aesthetically responding to my dream life as I follow dream directives released and journalized in my dream. My practice incorporates ancient biblical Israel's metaphorical dream interpretation methodology. This methodology of dream analysis was revived in the teachings of John Paul Jackson in 1980 (Jackson), which have proven to be personally accurate over the last two decades. In this thesis, I examine certain early twentieth-century theories and philosophies pertinent to my praxis that have influenced mainstream art movements and embodied dreams in art-making. Through my lens of perception, I contextualize my practice within those frameworks. Reflexively, I break down my art-making methodology and what has occurred this year while writing this paper. In the practice process component of this research, I dissect my practice of sketching rocks, which is ritualistic and a doorway to working from the inside out which release me into entering a higher aesthetic realm in my praxis. In the case study, I examine five journalized dreams which occurred while writing this paper. Each selected journalized dream inferred reference and direction for the art-making process of a selected dream that was highlighted within me; this dream also occurred during the same time frame. I conclude by showing how dream directives can affect art outcomes when interpreted with metaphoric dream analysis methodology.
Table of Contents
Abstract iii
Definition of Terms vi
Introduction 1
1.Spirituality and Dreams
2.The Way Men See 1900-2000 B.C
3.Expanding Serialist Theory
4.How I Expand Serialism
5.Rock Sketching as a Portal
6.Breaking down My Methodology
7.Dream Interpretation Basics
Conclusion
Definition of Terms:
Spirituality: The quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things: ". A shift in priorities allows one to embrace our spirituality more profoundly.
Dream: A series of thoughts, visions, or feelings that happen during sleep.
Precognitive dream: Reveals understanding about future phenomena that can not be inferred from actual available information.
Directives: Intending to guide or influence.
Mystic: Seeks by contemplation and self-surrender who obtains unity by self-absorption into the absolute and believes in spiritual apprehensions of truth beyond the intellect.
Revelation: A surprising and previously unknown fact, especially one that is made known in a dramatic way; something relating to human existence or the world.
Introduction
After attending school and studying painting, sculpture, Medieval and Renaissance art history in Siena, Italy, I was greatly influenced and drawn to the work and craftsmanship of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. Being born with one blind eye, I was determined to emulate the drawing skills of these masters in my artwork. I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting from RIT cum laude, and I was greatly influenced by a faculty that encouraged me to pursue both figurative and abstract expressionism. I completed 45 hours in the MFA painting program at the University of Buffalo, where I later received a Schomburg fellowship and completed an MAH in fine art and education. I taught art in public school until the year 2000. In 2000 I survived a near-fatal auto collision and was given a second chance at life along with my husband. I sustained a mild closed head injury that caused me to discontinue my teaching career. I had to re-learn math, reading comprehension, and writing which was a struggle. Slowly and gradually, my cognitive functions were replenished back to my former capabilities. However, it should be noted that my post-collision state of being has expanded and enhanced my dream life, causing me to rely heavily on dreams that I honor and embody for direction. I view the world today as fast-paced,, hasty and insensitive causing many to overlook the mysteries of the night season which I passionately embrace. Post-collision, my memory and reception of the language of the night season flourished.
During the post-collision rehabilitative years, I was primarily bedridden. In a recliner, I absorbed 21-hour classes on dream interpretation. I immersed myself in a group of sensitive and kind prophetic individuals led by a world-famous prophet, John Paul Jackson. Prophet John Paul Jackson developed courses and taught parabolic metaphoric dream analysis. His teachings and principles of dream analysis methodology based on ancient Hebrew pictograms profoundly influenced me. This period was extremely spiritually rewarding for me, as I mastered the mechanics of parabolic metaphoric dream interpretation and accurately interpreted over a thousand dreams. I then began accurately interpreting people's dreams online and around the world in secrecy.
In 2010, while healing, I began to inform my art practice with the language of the night season. In a precognitive dream, I dreamed of meeting a man of great influence in the art world and creating a book. A thought of creating a book of my art had never occurred to me. After exhibiting at Art Expo New York City in 2011, Tim Hill (renowned publisher for Ansel Adams) emailed me and asked me to collaborate and create a book of paintings of my dreams. I followed the precognitive dream directive from the prior year that foretold this event, and I agreed to create a book of my dreams. We worked together for four years to create the book Dreamscapes, where I selected and aesthetically responded to 40 of my journalized dreams dating from 2011-2012, published in 2014.
I commenced the pursuit of my aspirations and placed unwavering faith in the guidance they provided, recognizing their intrinsic value as a vital source of inner fortification. For the last 20 years to the present, I have embodied, embraced, received, and recorded this inner space. I have journalized every dream I have had since 1998. As I reflexively review my dream journals, they reveal past, present, and future phenomena. This paper will elucidate two parts of my art praxis—the practice of rock sketching and the effect of the precognitive dream directives received in my dreams that guide my art praxis.
Spirituality and Dreams
Undoubtedly, it is conceivable that some individuals may raise objections to perceiving reality through the prism of my spiritual and dream interpretive perspective. Nevertheless, I perceive the world in a manner that is inherently shaped by my unique cognitive predispositions. I invite you to follow me on my journey and consider my course.
I see dreams as a space in a spiritual dimension that reveals thoughts, visions, insights, feelings, and knowing's often from a higher realm of logic that occurs during sleep. Spirituality is a space within one's inner sanctum where one is spiritually absorbed and concerned about the things of the spirit instead of materiality. Many traditional art forms around the world express the spiritual dimension, a culture's cosmology, and individuals' spiritual experiences. Religious art and iconography often reveal the hidden aspects of spirit as glimpsed through the filter of cultural significance (Laughlin, 2004). One of the earliest occurrences of dream interpretation goes back to ancient Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations, earlier than the third millennium B.C. It is difficult to say which mention of dream interpretation is the oldest, but ancient Samaria seems to hold precedence. The dreams of Gilgamesh (c. 27OO-26OO B.C.), king of the Sumerian city of Uruk, are recorded in the epic that bears his name (Hughes, 2000).
Dream interpretation was regarded by ancient people in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome as an art requiring intelligence and, sometimes, divine inspiration. It became a motif in literature. It was treated as a science by philosophers and physicians. Dreams were thought to come either as clear messages or as symbols requiring interpretation. In the incubation method, the dreamer could sleep in a sacred place expecting a dream to elucidate a problem for which the dreamer desired guidance. Greeks channeled dreams to receive revelations through "incubation," a process of simply focusing attention on a specific issue when going to sleep (Barrett, 1993).
Dream interpretation was an honored profession with exponents such as Artemi Dorus of Daldis. Ancient dream traditions and beliefs can provide perspective for consideration of more recent theories of dream interpretation (Hughes, 2000). Until the Middle Ages, most ancient writings Oneirology was the study of dreams and the art of dream interpretation. In Judaism, dreams are regarded as God's voice and part of the world's experience that can be interpreted and from which lessons can be gleaned. Ancient Hebrews distinguished between good dreams from God and bad dreams from the forces of evil.
Biblical Israel is the period from which I attained the dream analysis methodology used in my art praxis. It has long been apparent in the study of post-biblical Judaism that the institution of prophecy had become dormant. For scholars studying Judaism in its many ancient manifestations, prophecy was a phenomenon closely related to the heritage of biblical Israel. It disappeared as biblical Israel gave way to Judaism after the Babylonian exile (Jassen, 2008).
Many Old Testament stories included divine revelations through dreams such as Jacob's ladder, Ezekiel's revelatory visions, and Daniel's dream of Kingdoms that for see in the book of Revelation. Although after the Enlightenment during the turn of the twentieth century, this dimension of spirituality in dreams was publicly discarded as Charlatanism or witchcraft, in private spheres, dream glossaries continued to be used (Chappelle, 2022).
I reflexively investigate and study the dream elements utilizing the parabolic metaphorical dream analysis utilized by the prophet Daniel in the Bible. This methodology will be further explored in the case study at the end of this paper. Like ancient biblical prophetic parabolic dream analysis, my art praxis can be traced back to ancient Hebrew Pictograms. The prophets of biblical Israel received revelations of past, present, and future phenomena in dreams. Since the eighties, this methodology has operated in prophetic circles in Western cultures and Europe (Jackson, 2006). Today in scientific circles, a new wave of anthropological research is expanding knowledge of how dreams reflect and actively respond to cultural, social, political, and religious influences in people's psyche and culture (Kracke, 1993).
The Way Men See 1900-2000 B.C
As I explore our current culture's perspective of dreams in art, I find it necessary to go back and review varied mainstream concepts, theories, and philosophies which influenced the thinking of twentieth-century artists who embodied multidimensionality in their art-making. I will examine the influences from the turn of the century to the present. I was instructed to do so in a 1998 precognitive dream, and I am carrying out this precognitive directive by clarifying how various influences have been woven into the Western cultural fabric and perception of dreams, which has dulled and swayed the twentieth-century mainstream dream art culture from embodying the prophetic eye of ancient biblical Hebrew culture.
I point out and comparatively contextualize my vantage point by sharing my point of departure. I will use personal journalized dream excerpts throughout this paper. In relation to my methodology, I highlight connections and gaps in the reception and interpretation of dreams and the multidimensionality of art practices.
I will begin with a precognitive directive dream that released timing. I received and journaled a dream in 2010 that I have since followed, causing me to wait for the appropriate time to release my insight into my art praxis. In the dream, I was pregnant, wanting to give birth. I went to a car where my childhood pediatrician, Dr. Waymen C McCoy, sat in the driver's seat. He was looking out the window. I asked him if I could give birth, and he said, 'Not yet,' 2010. I interpret this as a sign that it is not yet time to reveal this new work, which is symbolic of the child I wished to give birth to. Due to the lens of our culture, the play on the doctor's name cautions and directs me that the time is not yet ripe. Like Hilma of Klimt, my art praxis would not have been received in 2010 because of racism in Western culture.
Not Yet, acrylic 18x24". 2010 Renee Brown
Dreams were omnipresent in twentieth-century painting for the most part. However, they lost their religious and prophetic function during the turn of the century (Bergez, 2018). Psychoanalytic dreams were no longer turned toward the future but to the past of the dreaming subject (Bergez, 2018).
The 20th century was one of particular worldwide upheavals, ranging from wars to economic downturns to radical political movements. Between 1900 and 2000, artists were profoundly changed and transitioned. These changes were reflected in the works of avant-garde artists throughout the century. My research includes philosophers, theorists, artists, and art movements whose art practice embodied multidimensionality. I have chosen to emphasize serialism, theosophically influenced artists, and Western dream analysis. Additionally, I have discussed modernism, surrealism, Charles Burchfield, and a contemporary dream artist. My advisor introduced me to Dunne's (1914) serialist theory, and I realized that my art practice was an artistic extension of Dunne's serialist theory.
Over the course of the last twenty years, I have personally received and journalized precognitive dreams like JW Dunne, which have proven accurate in time. Dunne believed that he unintentionally experienced precognitive dreams that were out of sync with time on earth, as is the case with me. The first Dunne records occurred in 1898, in which he dreamed of the time on his watch before waking up and checking it. Twenty such experiences, some quite dramatic, led him to undertake a scientific investigation into the phenomenon, and from this, he developed a new theory of consciousness and time. Through years of experimentation with precognitive dreams and hypnagogic states, Dunne posited that our experience of time as linear was an illusion brought about by human consciousness. Dunne argued that past, present, and future were simultaneous and only experienced sequentially because of our mental perception of them. He believed that in the dream state, the mind was not shackled in this way and could perceive events in the past and future with equal facility (Nagel & Dunne, 1927).
While I agree with Dunne's serialist theory, which affirms linearity in time and a fourth dimension or the space in which we receive dreams in precognitive dreams, I cannot accept his overall conclusion in infinite regress because I have not experienced it in my reality. Dunne's serialist theory was popular and then declined over time. Simultaneously mainstream artists embraced Theosophy which will be explained later in this chapter. During this time, Dunne's serialist theory was going in another direction review. I believe serialism should be revisited, and it will add new knowledge in the area of dream analysis.
Theosophy, a religion established in the United States in the late 19th century and founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky, will now be examined. Categorized by scholars of religion as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism, Theosophy draws upon both older European philosophies, such as Neoplatonism, and Asian religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Many important figures, particularly within the humanities and the arts, were involved in the Theosophical movement and influenced by its teachings. Prominent scientists from the Theosophical Society included the inventor Thomas Edison, the biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, and the chemist William Crookes. Theosophy was also an influence over several early pioneers of abstract art. Hilma af Klimt's development of abstraction was directly tied to her work with the Theosophical Society to present and preserve spiritual concepts visually. The Russian expressionist and pioneering abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky was also very interested in Theosophy. The Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian was also influenced by Theosophical symbolism (Campbell, 1980).
While I understand the impulse of great minds of the time wanting to embrace a new view of spirituality, I see Theosophy as dulling the ability to receive, embody and further delve into and research Dunne's precognitive dream work, which would have widened their scope of dream analysis. The current research investigates the sensory presence of gods and spirits, which is central to many religions that have shaped human history. However, these experiences are poorly understood by social scientists and rarely studied empirically. Hearing God's voice, sensing the presence of the dead, and being possessed by a demon is among the most extraordinary human sensory experiences.
According to Luhrmann et al. (2021), experiences of spiritual presence are facilitated by cultural models depicting the mind as "porous," or permeable to the world, and by an immersive orientation toward inner life that enables a person to become "absorbed" in sensing the presence of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths. This view has much truth; however, my personal experience and art praxis methodology override the generality of this perspective and Theosophy.
In his book "The Spiritual in Art," Kandinsky referred to this fourth dimension or spiritual space as "inner necessities." Theosophy influenced Kandinsky at the turn of the 20th century. According to Kandinsky, true work of art originates from the 'artist,' a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical being. The "art" detaches itself from the artist, acquires an independent life, and becomes a personality, an independent subject animated by spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being. Christian eschatology and the perception of a forthcoming New Age fascinate Rabinovich (1994)." A common theme among Kandinsky's first seven Compositions is the apocalypse (the end of the world as we know it) writing of the "artist as prophet." In his book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky created paintings in the years immediately preceding World War I, showing a coming cataclysm that would alter individual and social reality (Simon, 2010). Kandinsky's exploration of deeper dimensions facilitated and widened the art world's access to spirituality in art.
Hilma Af Klimt knew she was onto something because she embodied the spiritual in art and anticipated that her spiritual work would not be accepted at the time. Hilma af Klimt was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered among the first abstract works known in Western art history (Cain, 2017). Hilma was a trained and talented artist who knew about color and composition; she was not an amateur. She adds: "Creativity is bigger than art history. Hilma is like Leonardo – she wanted to understand who we are as human beings in the cosmos." For Müller-Westermann, AfKlint is as important to Sweden as Münch to Norway (Kellaway, 2016). Fortunately, AfKlint was grounded. She was a conduit first, then an interpreter. She became a scholar of her work, producing a beautiful and botanically precise symbolic lexicon. It cannot be easily telescoped, but these symbols dominate spirals (evolution), U (the spiritual world), W (matter), and overlapping discs (unity). Yellow and roses (pleasingly) stood for masculinity. Blue and lilacs meant femininity. She may have been influenced by Goethe's Theory of Colors (1810). Yellow was "next to the night." Blue was "next to darkness." Green was perfect harmony. She explored dualities – including male and female sexuality – but unity was always her goal (ironically for a female artist working alone. (Bernitz, 2016). While I agree with Klimnts entry into a more profound spirituality, Klimt does not embody the precepts of her initial biblical foundation as she investigates multidimensionality. Here again, the prophetic eye that Dunne provided in serialism is diminished. She was wired to embrace the prophetic that had not yet reemerged in Western culture. So contextually speaking, during the early turn of the century, my art praxis as Hilma of Klimt's would not be regarded because of sexism and racism.
As I look at Western dream analysis, I will highlight the work of Sigmund Freud. Freud, the most cited psychologist of the 20th century, published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. This book represented a significant milestone in the field of dream interpretation. According to Freud, dreams represent a form of wish fulfillment and hold the key to a person's desires. Freud believed the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awaken the dreamer. In Freud's theory, dreams are instigated by everyday life's daily occurrences and thoughts. In what Freud called the "dream-work," these "secondary process" thoughts ("word presentations"), governed by the rules of language and the reality principle, become subject to the "primary process" of unconscious thought ("thing presentations") governed by the pleasure principle, wish gratification and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. Because of the disturbing nature of the latter and other repressed thoughts and desires which may have become linked to them, the dream work operates a censorship function, disguising by distortion, displacement, and condensation the repressed thoughts to preserve sleep (Rycroft, 1995). However, I am hesitant to accept this theory due to the fact that my work and experience in receiving precognitive dreams that reveal future phenomena, as described in Dunne's serialist theory, do not align with Freud's Western dream analysis.
My dreams come from a higher dimension and intellect that often incites me into past, present, and future phenomena when interpreted accurately with metaphoric parabolic dream analysis methodology. I will now examine art movements in the artist's embodied multidimensionality. Modernism in the fine arts was a philosophical, religious, and art movement that fostered a time of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th century to the mid-twentieth century, especially following world war I. The movement reflected a desire to create new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization, reflecting the newly emerging industrial world (Skeele, 2000). Modernism is part of the historical process by which the arts have dissociated themselves from nineteenth-century assumptions, which had become dead conventions with time (Faulkner, 2013). Surrealism, which originated in the early 1920s, came to be regarded by the public as the most extreme form of modernism or the avant-garde of modernism or high modernism surrealism (Peter, 1990). Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. According to "leader André Breton, it aimed to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute, super-reality," or surrealistic (The 20th-Century Art Book, 2001).
As I do in my work, Charles Burchfield is the only artist I can think of who honed and embodied his dream life through journaling. Throughout his career, Burchfield recorded more than a hundred dreams in his journals. He also created thousands of doodles, referred to as "a form of subconscious thinking in visual terms." He went on to say that some of his most useful abstract motifs came from the practice (Burchfield, 2018). I like Burchfield's use of sketches of rocks that overflow into my art practice.
In examining contemporary artists embodying the nocturnal season, I will point to Gregory Chatonsky, a French artist who has been working on the connection between dreams and artificial intelligence. He designed an artificial intelligence program for a piece titled "Dream Bag" and taught it to generate dreams from a database of 20,000 dreams collected at the University of California. These stories are then read and generate associated images produced by an artificial neural network. This piece is an incredible attempt to materialize an intangible neurological process within our brains. My approach to understanding the language of the night season is different because of the lens of dreams our culture sees through (Chappelle, 2022). Other than serialization, many of these mainstream influences dull the cultural lens's ability to see precognitive dreams and directives.
Expanding Serialist Theory
I believe my art praxis methodology will forge a new path if the artist is open to receiving, researching, and responding to their dream life. The following sections will explain Dunne's serialist theory and how my art praxis embodies and expands upon the precepts of serialism. In his book An Experiment with Time, J. W. Dunne proposes a theory of time that he calls "Serialism" to explain his observations. Although Dunne's precognitive experiences prompted him to reconsider the nature of time, he maintains that his theory is not dependent on empirical evidence of time's nature but rather follows directly from certain commonsense propositions about time's nature that are universally accepted by non-philosophers everywhere (Dunne's Theory of Infinite Temporal Dimensions, 2013)
Dunne proposed that our experience of time as linear is an illusion brought about by human consciousness. He argued that past, present, and future were continuous in a higher-dimensional reality, and we only experience them sequentially because of our mental perception of them. He went further, proposing an infinite regress of higher time dimensions inhabited by the conscious observer that I have not experienced and can't comment on at this time. Dunne's theory offered a scientific explanation for ideas of consciousness being explored widely at the time. It became well known and was discussed by philosophers such as J. A. Gunn, C. D. Broad, and M. F. Cleugh and the parapsychologist G. N. M. Tyrrell. While some accepted his dream observations and the general thrust of his arguments, the majority rejected his infinite regress as logically flawed (Nagel & Dunne, 1927).
How I Expand Serialism
My art praxis is very much in dialogue with Dunne. I believe that reality can be viewed as linear time and that the fourth dimension is where many of our dreams originate (Brown, 2014), allowing us to dream of future occurrences, as is evident in many of my paintings. My art practice expands serialism by including interpretations rooted in ancient Hebrew pictograms.
Rock Sketching as a Portal
This section explains the origins of rocks and how they inform my art praxis process. Since the early days, humanity has made use of rocks. This early period called the Stone Age saw the development of many stone tools. Rocks and stones have always held a deep spiritual significance for humans. In many cultures, rocks, and stones are viewed as symbols of strength, protection, and stability. They are believed to possess healing power By: Author The Editors of Give Me History (The Symbolism of Rocks and Stones (Top 7 Meanings) - Give Me History Posted on April 25, 2023) .
To remain authentic in this report, I was drawn to use rocks. In 2010, I had a dream in which I saw two rocks lying in varying positions. In practice sketching, I have used that rock dream as my point of departure in releasing my hand to flow into multidimensionality. This practice was nothing more than a byproduct of my practice until advisors recommended it to archive two decades' worth in sketchbooks.
Rock sketching is a very special space in my practice. I honor this iteration of sketching rocks. To begin this process, I always choose various rocks. I gravitate toward rocks with triangular shapes. I touch and feel the rocks and set them in a way that is indicative of my dream of 2010. Sometimes moving them but always attempting to set them as seen in the dream.
My drawings can sometimes start stiff. Hence, I will keep moving the rocks and continue to repeat the sketch. When the lines become loose and spontaneous, I begin to see, allowing my perspective of the drawing of the rocks to shift to multidimensionality. I occasionally notice the lines overlapping and creating form and figure-ground relationships that appear otherworldly .
When not practicing rock sketching daily, I must return to the sketches to feel grounded. I always iterate this process multiple times until there is fluidity and the connection to my inner spirit is released through my fingers onto the surface. This is my first step before going to the next phase of materiality, inclusive of chalk, paint, sculpture, or filming. The energy or spirit connection that comes through my inner sanctum through my eyes onto the surfaces leaves peace.
I frequently see flowing forms, rhythms, and invisible lines. Later in the project process component Rock Talk video, I will describe what happens during sketching and how I see and flow into another dimension through the practice of rock sketching. The Sandy Hook series shows an example of this process revealing future phenomena. I unknowingly created these images a week before the tragedy. The marks were predictive, reflecting the upcoming Sandy Hook event through gestural strokes. Unknowing the marks recorded sequential bullet points of the series of events that would unfold, I had titled them accordingly.
Some of the key qualities of the rocks I am drawn to when collecting them for sketching is that they are somewhat triangular, as in the dream I received in 2011. To begin, I always sketch these rock shapes by looking closely at their form and then sketch subconsciously until my lines take on a life of their own on paper.
Then, I visually center on the edges of rocks. They serve as a conduit for knowledge when arranged in a specific manner, granting me access to an alternate dimension. By overlapping the rock sketches, a sense of depth is experienced, facilitating the discovery of a more profound realm. I prefer the viewer to develop a sensitivity to seeing within the lines and traveling through the sketch. The rocks unfold into layers of reality, sometimes of dream elements. When the rock lines flow loosely, they become a breath of life and spirit. I have never used rock sketches to mean something or to be symbolic of a thing. My rock sketching is not symbolic of the form, but I intend its meaning to be open-ended. Rock sketching centers me as I move ahead into art making. I frequently ritualistically repeat this process hundreds of times as a form of cleansing before approaching a clear tabula rasa in making art.
Breaking Own My Methodology
This section provides an example of my art methodology. It will point out and give meaning to precognitive dream directives that affect my art-making. While painting a dream inspired by a dream titled Flourish (golden balloons were floating into the sky in the dream), I struggled with creating the atmospheric effect. In a dream, I saw the strokes to use in the Flourish painting. I applied the strokes and achieved the effect I desired. I call this a precognitive dream directive.
The direction which I followed was given in the dream revealing the strokes. The effect was the desired outcome in the atmosphere. There are various ways I enter into art-making. The following dream analysis metaphoric methodology is the method I use in my art praxis.
Dream Interpretation Basics
1. Record it as soon as possible
• Date
• Time
• Possibly draw a diagram
2. Identify your role in the dream – how are you participating in the dream?
• Observer
• Participant
• Observer/participant
• Main focus
3. Find the focus – who or what is the dream about?
4. Write down the main facts
• What object or thought occurs most often, and what remains with you when the dream
ends?
• Observe the sequence of things
5. What questions linger about the dream?
6. Title your dream
After applying the above and journaling my dream; in stillness and peace, I often receive a revelation regarding the interpretation. Another way is to view the dream metaphorically and walk into and through the dream, which takes much experience and practice. Dream interpretation cannot be mechanically or scientifically figured out using dream dictionaries. Often during the dream, I receive the interpretation of the dream.
Conclusion
In this paper, I began by breaking down how precognitive dream directives affect art outcomes and gave examples. For over two decades, I have had precognitive dreams and followed their directives, which I have found to be accurate. In the practice process section of this paper, I have shared an example of my practice methodology. In the case study, I responded aesthetically and interpreted five journalized precognitive dreams with directives. This paper examines the early turn of the twentieth-century philosophical and theoretical influences that I believe dulls an artisan's ability to receive precognitive dreams and directives. My art practice is an extension of JW Dunne's 1914 serialist theory, and my methodology expands the serialist concept with parabolic metaphoric dream analysis, which is broken down. I hope opening a conversation about precognitive dream directives will fill a knowledge gap in the cross-section of dream analysis and fine arts.
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