Dream On

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Madeleine Wood, “A Remoter World,” 2018

oil on canvas, 30” x 40”

It’s unusual to hear someone admit that they like daydreaming. In these busy times, the work ethic is a driving force that spills over into all aspects our lives, thanks to digital technology. We have become human doings, constantly clicking and swiping, seeking to fill apparently endless needs as we rush mindlessly from place to place. Sitting back, letting our minds drift, doing nothing, feels almost shameful. So much so, I was surprised recently by someone’s observation that relaxation has become an act of resistance. And surprised too, when artist Madeleine Wood announced: “Daydreaming has always been a part of my life.”

Still, Wood, whose exhibition, Dream On, opens Sept. 8 at Victoria’s Madrona Gallery, is no slouch. Her work – ongoing series of intimate close-ups of unmade beds, nude bodies, flowers and more – suggests a focused and deeply watchful gaze. Wood, who earned a Master’s degree in 1996 from Concordia University in Montreal after studying at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, recalls an instructor telling her she paints from the end of her nose.

Her latest paintings go further, combining small moments of quiet observation with imagery that suggests more overt dream states. One painting, Remembering Flight, shows a woman sleeping under a red quilt. An aerial perspective of the northern tundra floats behind her pillow and tiny silhouettes of white airplanes are imposed over the quilt, so subtly that on quick glance they look almost like a linen pattern. The woman, Wood tells me, was a bush pilot, but the metaphor of the dream as flight is so universal it really doesn’t need a backstory.

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Madeleine Wood, “Remembering Flight,” 2018

oil on canvas, 24” x 30”

Wood, who has always worked from her own photographs, achieves these new effects by projecting images over existing paintings. The initial impulse that led to this approach still excites her and the signs of experimentation are everywhere. Some paintings explore bolder patterns, less successfully, I think, as patterns can easily overpower. Others venture more to magic realism. In A Remoter World, for instance, a woman’s naked shoulders emerge from rumpled sheets, blending almost seamlessly with jagged mountains bathed in mist and glowing light. There’s a molten, turbulent quality to the image that suggests the primal aspects of human life. “It’s me,” says Wood, “facing my fear in the remotest of places.”

Wood, who lives in Fanny Bay, a small community on the east coast of Vancouver Island, believes dreaming, whether asleep or awake, is vital.

“Daydreaming is a really important part of making sense of life,” she says. “Daydreaming has so many forms. Some of it is just being out in my garden weeding mindlessly, or being in the throes of a painting, where it’s at a mechanical level. You’re not conceiving it any more; you’re just producing it. Or, you know how women connect over a quilting bee, and the most amazing conversations might happen then.

“I’ve really worked with lifting the judgment from that term, daydreaming, and turning it into something like problem solving. In many ways, for us to come up with creative solutions, we really need to give ourselves time and space to be bored and to allow things to come in the side door of our mind.”

After our interview, Wood sends some poems that inspire her. This one, The Dream Keeper, by American poet Langston Hughes, strikes a chord.

Bring me all your dreams

You dreamer,

Bring me all your

Heart melodies

That I may wrap them

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers

Of the world. ■

Madeleine Wood’s exhibition, Dream On, is at the Madrona Gallery in Victoria from Sept. 8 to Sept. 22, 2018.