In the 1970s-80s, Rita Wolff painted a series of watercolors of dreams. Thirty or so were published in a book with this grandiose claim:

Although she is self-taught and has only been painting for a dozen years it can be said that Wolff has extended that art by a new category; because unlike the dream-like subjects of surrealism, Wolff creates pictorial records of actual dreams, of her own, of friends and acquaintances.

As if nobody ever painted or drew an actual dream before 1975!

Her real innovation is the high proportion of other people's dreams that Wolff illustrated. She wasn't first; Henri Rousseau's famous The Dream was his friend Yadwigha's dream, not his own. But it's rare. Maddeningly, the book undercuts this genuine originality by omitting the "actual dreams" that the paintings illustrate--removing the other half of the collaboration!

So, deprived of Anne's own words, all I can do is guess at the meaning here.

The high winds, low black clouds but blue sky above suggest the eye of a hurricane, as a storm surge floods a fair-sized town (note the streecar line). Round the lone figure the wind blows hard to sea, but round the others it blows inland, like the surge. Proof it's no natural storm; is she a wizard or prophet for whom the world's winds do not apply?

The colors of the dresses form a rainbow. In the story of Noah and the Ark, the rainbow is God's promise never to flood the world again. Here, the rainbow's been broken up, and so's the word of God.

If it were my dream. But it's not.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Rita Wolff: Watercolours, 1974-1985 by Rita Wolff, 1986; St Martin's Press, NY (Plate XVI)

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