Sight Unseen

By Andrea Mulder-Slater

 

When I make a painting, I am either looking at something (a landscape, a coffee cup, a house…) or - in the case of my abstracts - I am thinking about a place (the ocean, the forest, the city…). 

However, the inspiration for the Sight Unseen series came from a very different place. 

On a morning earlier this year, I woke up to a cascade of images in my mind. I could clearly see row upon row of paintings unlike any I had seen, or painted before. 

I opened my eyes and at once, the images were gone. 

I pressed my eyes closed and to my delight, they were still there. 

I spent the next few minutes blinking while drawing what I was seeing on a piece of paper, making notes about the colours and shapes. 

Then, the images disappeared, and I got up. 

Later, I did a some research and found out that the asleep-to-awake state I was in when I saw the images is called hypnopompia. 

HYPNO POM PIA. Pretty catchy right? 

So was I hallucinating (a friend asked me)? Maybe. Visual hallucinations during the period between sleep and awakening are pretty common.

Then again, I do suffer from lattice degeneration, which basically means my eyes are broken. So maybe what I saw was a symptom of this rare affliction. 

Either way, I knew I had to paint what I saw. So, I did. And in this way, the Sight Unseen series was born. 

[And more are on the way.] 

No, really.

You can shop my paintings at: https://jareaart.com/collections/abstract-art