Lauren Adams {art studio}

Artist Statement:

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During sleep, we leave our daily reality and travel the dream cycle while our physical bodies remain on Earth where we lay.  I explore this duality of existence and the veil between realities and levels of consciousness through a sister series of “Nocturnal Landscapes” and “The Dream Vortex”.  

 

Both series begin from snapshots collected from others, as well as my own, that capture the markings left in place of a previous night’s sleep.  From these photos, I create a “Nocturnal Landscape” image by cropping the photo and focusing on landscape formations created in the bed linens that resemble places such as mountains or bodies of water, etc.  This world is then painted realistically, using archival oil painting techniques to focus on realistically painting certain visual clues such as threads, seams, and other textural references that are found in the photo references.  By hyper focusing on the landscapes created by the marks in the bedding, and removing objects of humanity,  I strive to dance the line of guiding the viewer to recognizing textile materials and being transported into an imaginary landscape.  I play with different elements to emphasize tactile feelings and emotions.  Through accentuating light, areas of focus, certain colors, and patterns, the viewers are encouraged to take in textures with their eyes and visually feel the piece as if they are in it.  

 

In the series, “The Dream Vortex”, I radially rotate and bookend a “Nocturnal Landscape” composition.  By kaleidoscoping the images, an abstracted doorway into the dream realm appears. These paintings of  large scale portals visualize a space between the veil of our reality and another level of consciousness.  I blur this line by painting dissolving realistically painted textiles into an abstraction towards the gateway.  In my series “The Dream Vortex” I continue to explore and question our layers of consciousness while paying homage to the beauty in even the tiniest moments of our day, the people who left them, and the universal mystery of dreaming.