For several years, I have frequently dreamed of hanging around one place. It was a small seaside city with hilly landscapes. Everything seemed familiar while I was in my dream: I knew exactly how to navigate in this town, and I also seemed to know each area with its different functionalities well. However, this place is total fiction - invented by me. I do not recall having visited any site closely resembling this town; besides, the place I grew up was quite far from the ocean. This city was quiet and gray, with some crumbling industrial factories dotted around, surrounded by residential apartment blocks about 4-5 stories tall. One night I dreamed of standing on the top of an abandoned factory, presumably ten stories high, and overlooking the part of town that faces the coastal line, with dark cloudy sky covering the gray sea. It was a cold day in that dream. One exciting aspect was that, there was another land across the open ocean. That land had come into my view could have been just the tip of a peninsular, which could indicate a much larger continent over the horizon, or maybe it was just a portion of a relatively small island. Whichever was the real answer, I wasn't sure.
This painting presents that very dreamscape of mine. I would like to believe that I have depicted and represented the image of my landscape in an honest, faithful and detailed manner. However, it would be easily understood that, due to the nature of the dream as a factor, it was very hard for me to get any actual visual references during the making of this project. In order to get enough detailed visual information, I searched for many photos with similar appearances. Research from Google Earth's aerial view was also proven to be very helpful.
As a result, I'm feeling quite content with enough findings to support my visual references, which truly helped fill in the gaps between the fragmented memories of my dreams. However, the downside of such a practice is that, the more I use actual found visual references, the less faithful the memories of my dream could be presented. Although I knew it would be an interesting painting during the process, and I was anticipating a great final outcome, I was nevertheless feeling nervous at the same time, because I was afraid of losing the true memories of my dreamy land after completing this painting.
The experiences of dreaming are sometimes compared to watching movies. That's why I designed my painting to be in a panorama composition, and I made the stretch canvas in the strict cinematic aspect ratio of 2.35:1, with the imaging sized 56.4" x 24" inches.
draft concept drawing
