Dream Sequence IV

Ella Noe

Dream Sequence IV

60" x 48" x 2"

Liquid acrylic, acrylic paint and wax pastel on canvas

2021

$3,200

“Dream Sequence” is part of a new project born in the pandemic, from the necessity, due to not feeling safe outside, to find a space in which to fully exist and create. When the lockdown started, I was unable to continue interacting with other artists as before. The need to create led me to search for other options and opened up a new place – the zoom place - and the possibility of interacting and collaborating with other artists despite the fact we could not be in the same room. And that’s how my collaboration with an artist friend who had moved to NYC years ago, Fei Li, began. What started out as a game became my familiar place where to go to find inspiration and create; an exploration of the visual language through shared tales. We created our own space from stories by reading myths and fairy tales from our diverse backgrounds to each other while painting from them. Each time we read something new we created a new process to interact with it.

The paining “Dream Sequence IV” was born a from a Herman Hesse story, “Dream Sequence”, from his fairytales book. We read the story to each other without knowing what it was about. We read out loud, a paragraph or two, then painted for 10 minutes, then back to reading a couple paragraphs, and then again painting, and so on until the story was over. As the story developed, the painting developed. Not knowing what was going to happen in the story or to the painting, and being in a place of not knowing how to relate to the outside world and everything that was happening, I went inside to find my local inspiration. This ongoing project is not only about the recording of this experience onto the canvas, but also about the exploration of the need for artists to collaborate and the Synergy that’s created when we do.