2012
Approximate Dimensions: 36″ x 44″
Gouache on Masonite
This painting was done in collaboration with three other artists and their works. Our project started off with very broad rules that defined size (36” by 44”) and theme (dreamscapes). We decided to work on our own canvases and panels at first so we could see each other’s way of working and then spent two day switching paintings and adding our most prominent marks, colours and textures from our own paintings into everyone else’s. All of our paintings benefited from this, especially because of our chosen theme which called for depth and distortion and surrealism.
For my individual painting, I was focusing on dream imagery combined with somewhat mundane images of the physical world that get pumped up when merged into dreams. The idea was to cover organic, dreamlike qualities and hazy colours with strong lines, forces of the real world and our actual surroundings that stay behind our closed lids even while we sleep, that further deform already distorted dreams.
Gary Evan’s landscapes have really stayed with me since I first looked them up and I love the idea of portals. This is where the cutout emerged from and settled the dream into a subway. Its purpose was to be a door opening into the real world, to serve as the gaps that we can’t recall when we wake up after long periods of slumber, that bother us until we forget about them and our curiosity leads us elsewhere.
Tasneem Dairywala 