Advisor: Jason Paradis

Portals Into My Unconscious

Have you ever wondered where your dreams originate from? Have you ever contemplated what they mean? Portals Into My Unconscious is an exhibition concentrated on the unconscious mind and dreaming. My audience gets a view into dreams that originate from my unconscious. My dreams are shown in the form of paintings and sculptures.

Doors are repeated within my show covering the walls, masks, paintings and one standing as its own form. The doors covering my six paintings can be opened and closed. These doors act as “portals” into my unconscious mind. Although we can not readily reach our repressed thoughts and memories from our unconscious, I believe our dreams to be a gateway into an area of our mind we can not reach. The dreams in my show are based on sea creatures in scenes separate from their usual environment. These sea creatures are my connection between water and the unconscious mind. Water is important to this exhibition because it connects to Freud’s theory of the mind as an iceberg. The iceberg consists of our conscious, subconscious and unconscious. The unconscious is the lowest point of the iceberg repressed from the light of day, submerged in water. The unconscious part of our mind deals with desires, thoughts, memories and emotions that we are not readily aware of. The unconscious mind can hold answers to why we act certain ways that we are unaware of and trigger certain thoughts. Sigmund Freud believed this part of the mind was where dreams inherently came from.

The idea of the unknown, dealing with our past and desires intrigues me. There are endless questions and possibilities about what our unconscious mind holds from us. It makes me wonder what my dreams may be trying to reveal to my conscious mind. Sigmund Freud did not just think dreams originated from our unconscious, he believed dreams themselves can be interpreted. Objects and activities occurring within dreams had a reason according to Freud which interests me as an artist. Using surrealism I can create dreamscapes in which I alter reality and defy what we understand to be reality.

This exhibition is an opportunity for my audience to delve into my imaginative mind and dreams, while also scratching the surface of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the mind. My goal for this exhibition was to have my audience think about their own mind and explore the many open and closed doors in their unconscious mind while viewing an interpretation of mine using sea creatures. Behind every door, there lies a portal into our unconscious mind and there are endless possibilities as to what may be there.