by Jenny Badger Sultan; two dreams (2016/11/19, 2017/1/18) on dreamwork, memory & amnesia
1: Ruins in India. Fascinating but age-blurred; wish I could see the carvings better...
2: Giving presents at a party, I hand a girl a vertebra from the abyss, encrusted with jewel-like barnacles...
There's a large bear wandering the museum, and somehow I feel good about it...
A man obsessed with blood and death disturbs me, but I have to admit I share his interests...
Next the blood comes home; a surgeon wants to flay my tongue...
Next, witch-children rebel against a bloody flossing ritual and fly away on broomsticks...
A sequence of short dreams full of creatures. They warn I'll face leukemia...
I keep dreaming of awkward but successful transitions into new life, and paint them all in one landscape...
Dreams warning of mania and paralyzing shame alternate with calm dreams of life and growth...
Decision by decision, we made our way down immense rock crags. Below, I had to put out a deadly fire,
a fire as solid as wood or stone, with a white staff. What am I really trying to calm?
a 2015 painting weaving seven dreams (2014/5/4, 6/9, 7/1 & 9/4; 2015/5/23, 6/26 & 8/25)
A portrait of Clotho, the Greek Fate who spins our life-threads, by a pool woven of my dreams from this time...
I climb down a cliff before night strands me; but in town, risky adolescent games cause a crash...
Trapped on an island, spied on and controlled, we decide to jump off
a cliff and die; but as we jump, a spirit sneaks us off be reborn...
Bodies are laid out upstairs in a dirt bed. Potatoes will sprout.
The plants won't feed on the bodies, but they will support the vines...
I no longer have the text of this dream, but its image anticipated and prepared me for my actual marriage...
My father is supposed to speak, but he falls asleep onstage. I rush up to try and rouse him, but...
The boy and I walk a spiral trail down the mountain to the caves of tears...
A nun-like figure shows me three arcs; two are forms of direct power,
but the third, innermost arc can lead to secrecy and manipulation...
After our trip to Turkey, I dreamed I was dancing in
a heavy black robe like those the Turkish women wore...
I sneak into a dance rehearsal. Huge colorful cloth goddesses dance,
while four fat women wearing only scarves weave round them...
CAUTION: NUDITY
On the anniversary of 9/11, I dreamed a friend was welding nude. In his careful hands, the fire was harmless...
I'm talking to a friend while waiting in line, when a huge fish appears. It turns into an equally huge snake...
A pod of whales in the sky and a circle of children dressed like seed-pods both beg me to interpret them...
I dream my foot has a huge bloody crevasse. But I study it calmly...
In the midsummer dream, I'm at a wedding in the Russian forest;
in winter, I dream I hold an emaciated girl as she breathes her last...
A hulking, intimidating young man is at my door, with two scary dogs. Wait, is that Carl Jung?...
I'm a priestess standing on a stone terrace, holding a ritual axe. Before me kneels a sacrifice to the Goddess...
I meet a girl with a plant growing out of her head...
Someone prays to the spirit of a spring to heal me...
I watch people practice exercises with the ritual feel of voudun or candomble...
At a party, I go hunting for my husband and find him on a terrace facing a Bengal tiger...
In a domed tower, we all look up bewildered by a statue like an ancient herm, floating in mid-air...
A huge white ovoid like a tethered cloud hangs over a city street. We enter it and search for the crew...
I know we will cross the water surrounding the heart of Jerusalem, but not yet...
As we climb down the steep mountainside, clutching bushes to keep from falling,
I ask Laura "Do you want another child?"
I visit a friend's ramshackle cottage--trees grow through the walls. But glorious meadows! Spring at last...
A waterfall leaps from a mountain so huge, steep and distant its base is lost in the haze...
A colorful magic web I saw in a dream and painted; but I've been unable to trace the dream so far in my journals...
I stood in the desert preparing for a contest with a man and his snake. But he cheated! Then my cat Lulu intervened...
by Jenny Badger Sultan; Jan-Feb 2003, painting of a dream-series
My dreams were troubled by war. So I painted them in concentric rings--lotus, fire, children, animals, and nightmares...
Our dream-group's dreams had a lot of imagery in common: circles, groups, meditation. I fused them into this piece...
I met a woman whose art (and her love for the Earth) inspired me to start a series of paintings with creatures hidden in landscapes...
A dragon-woman showed me a cache of art. When I painted her face I recalled seeing it in a dream decades ago in a mirror...
CAUTION: DRAGON BREASTS
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 14 dreams (mostly Jan-Mar 2011) painted on one canvas
A dream urged me to paint a big landscape with cutout movable (magnetic) dream figures
and liftable flaps revealing hidden dream scenes...
I climb a huge mushroom-shaped rock rising from a hotspring and prepare to dive in...
At first no one seems interested in my mural-design for the inside of the City Hall dome, but...
We stood meekly in line to be beheaded. I tried to accept my fate and commended myself to God... CAUTION: READ THE TITLE!
Two friends send energy through me, transforming me. Now that
my legs are detachable, I can sit comfortably on my eggs...
I am given a gift of "Nibbling Fruits" which only I may eat--because I've been feeding everyone but me...
At the beach, wading with my fellow dreamworker Stephanie.
The waves are getting bigger--are they a hazard, or can we ride them?
While visiting a friend in New Orleans in my dream, I saw a pangolin. I was very excited...
At a party I meet a friend I thought was dead. She’s become a small talking rabbit made of cake, and I...
CAUTION: UGH
A pigeon with a head like Queen Victoria's keeps fastening onto
my clothing with its beak, and this nagging feels familiar...
I'm shown corn plants growing from skulls, and it seems like I must plant some skull-corn myself...
A huge spiral nautilus needs healing; its coils are coming undone, and if it dies, all on earth may die with it...
by Jenny Badger Sultan, 1999/5/15, 6/12 & 7/14, a painting based on 3 dreams
I'm in the Hypogeum, an ancient Maltese dream-temple. I join some women
staging a ritual; a little girl draped in a web plays the role of an insect...
Mt Everest is snowfree and red; in the next dream I redden a sandstone cave with ochre. I feel uneasy...
In a Scythian church, a painting says:
"Little St Bridget was bound so hard that when they released her she flew"...
I am given a dehydrated package of dried snake to insert in my vagina. Inside it will unfold and come to life...
CAUTION: KIDS, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
In a desert, I find a tree with red purselike pods. But they all seem empty,
and I know they should each contain a vivid yellow snake...
A woman up a tree has white flaky stuff camouflaging her.
It cracks and peels like snakeskin. What tree is this, exactly?
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2002/1/19, a dream-painting of a dream about dream-painting!
I'm teaching an art class full of strange masklike beings. We debate art
as spontaneous process, versus art as planned product...
First a lone image on waking, of a woman cradling a skeleton; ten days later,
a nightmare of spiders swarming out of my toilet, covering me...
I'm at the beach, collecting stones to make a gigantic face viewable only from the air...
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 1997, a collage on a dream-idea
A phrase from a dream, "the remains of men and women," led to this image
of a black sun in the underworld amid strata of time and the psyche...
It's Thanksgiving but my brother won't come in; he's digging up red earth. In our family he always digs up...
I'm shown a mysterious two-faced carving;
I shush loud people disturbing my therapy;
I'm told of a documentary on the archetypal mother...
I see two gorillas in the field. One waves at me and approaches. I feel excited but a little scared...
Make silhouettes of your beloved vegetables; then listen to the spaces between...
CAUTION: LEWD SQUASH
A dream voice announced "The verdure is accomplished." Green is a healing color for me...
In the next dream we sat round a green pool, talking of healing. But the snails troubled me...
My friend Verity's given a beautiful set of wings. I'm envious until I consider what angel wings imply...
A friend explained she planned to be a human viewfinder, bendng into
an arch for a male spirit to dive through. I didn't want to risk it...
I dream my mother takes over caring for my sick daughter; I feel pushed aside.
When I wake, I try to paint a more positive image of mothering.
For a week, dream after dream has opportunities for patience and letting go of jealousy...
In a camp, women wove mats. I was tempted to try. But it was
months before I learned what they'd really been weaving..
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2000/3/23 & 2000/4/19, twin dreams of carved women
A woman is knifed by the sea. I cradle her, but she's probably dying...
For my intitiation-ordeal, I have to cut designs in my own back! I can't reach, so...
I'm in a ring of seven white-haired women, our arms all interlocking.
When I woke I had fun working out the pattern of those interlinked arms...
DAY: we're preparing for a trip to Malta to see ancient sites.
DREAM: Hiking, I discover a gigantic white snake. It feels like a good omen...
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
A friend who's fought lymphoma invites me to sleep in a cave, but I fear a rattlesnake will bite me...
After teaching a class on color, I had a series of vivid dreams
about color, and tried fusing them into one painting...
At the beach, a barrel of huge snails somehow heal my legs.
In the next dream, back on the beach, I give birth to our son...