The idea of Dream Tigers come from a piece by Jorge Borges. I love this mixture of looking back on the dreams of childhood and how we as creative people never can quite match with our art the imaginings that we have in our minds.
Dreamtigers
In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger: not the jaguar, the spotted “tiger” of the Amazonian tangles and the isles of vegetation that float down the Paraná, but that striped, Asiatic, royal tiger, that can only be faced by a man of war, on a castle atop an elephant. I used to linger endlessly before one of the cages at the zoo; I judged vast encyclopedias and books of natural history by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those illustrations: I who cannot rightly recall the brow or the smile of a woman.) Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger.
Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird.
[From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Mildred Boyer]
Most excellent! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteYou are most welcome. :-)
ReplyDeleteAwesome sauce in a can.
ReplyDeleteVery cool, Marilyn. Is that study in acrylic on wood?
ReplyDeleteCara! Hello! I also use a lot of pearlescent inks and gold leaf. This study is on wood. I'll probably do the larger piece on canvas.
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