Are your dreams a gilded cage?

The Dreamer’s Cage is the name of a particular topic I have taken on in my recent painting and drawing activity. I have included a few of these works below, in August I decided to do a name search on the word “dreamer’s cage” and interestingly enough only one relevant link came up to a poem written in 2012 by a blogger called Phoenix, who allowed me to reprint to poem in this blog.

In February 2015 I created the first of the many versions of The Dreamer’s Cage, the original was a charcoal drawing created in a very brief amount of time, maybe fifteen minutes, but the effect of seeing it brought me to a stop for the day. It was very powerful to see it unfold on the paper. In the coming days I created an oil on canvas of the same image, again with the same effect on me. At first impression I thought about people who are prisoners of conscience, that is why the lips peak out through the barbed wire wrappings, a stripped figure in a cage.  In the many versions since I continue to hold the idea of the figure cut off from it’s surrounding, and in some way acquiescing to circumstance.