Wer schläft in einem Bett Silber hat Goldene Träume.

Who sleeps in a bed of silver has golden dreams.

The subject of my Paintings come from the annotations that I write during the last 10 years of my sleeping-dreaming. When I had a dream I wake up and write it in a small notebook.

After 10 years I realize that it is a good subject for painting. Sometimes I paint the whole story of the dream in a painting and sometimes a part of several dreams in one painting. Or a composition of several objects or things that happened in the dreams.

When I start working on one of those paintings, I try to create a good image on the canvas. But it’s difficult to give the dream I dreamt in a good way on the canvas. The reality is hard and the dream is often soft and miraculous. Especially when I must choose the colors in relation with the subjects. I begin with one of the subjects in my dreams, and make a sketch on canvas and look for colors to paint. However I dream in colors, it is difficult to those the right colors. When I paint I think about the next image and where it’s came on the canvas. And so I am working in the whole painting. Mostly I work on one or even with two or three paintings at the same time. I look always for a good composition at my work. My technique for this paintings is with oil.

Ones Friedrich Nietzsche said:

In our dreams we consume too much our creativity mind- and for this reason we are missing the most of our creativity by day.

'Dream paintings'

The dream as a subject of painting, representing a dream in an image is not that simple. Getting into the world of dreams is not tangible and from a certain point of view surreal. When reading out a recorded dream as a story, all kind of images and representations will cross your mind.

Petra has been writing down her dreams for more then ten years now. The multiplicity of images she found in these 'books of dreams' inspired her to transpose these images on canvas.

It was difficult for her to make a choice out of hundreds of these stories and transforming the imaginary and surreal into concrete, figurative images. Her aim was to surprise the observer and drag him into her world of divergent subject and colour compositions but above all a structure of alienation and estrangement; the 'dream painting'. Quit a different experience.

A beautiful example of her work is the canvas depicting an Open Window and Swimming Pigs It is composed out of distinct elements and multiple dreams. The crows, pigs and the diving girl have no significance or importance in relation to each other Several elements are recomposed into a new fantastic story in her mind. In that process there must have been an urgent desire for empty space, wideness. Consequently I feel she uses the water as a metaphor for unlimited space and the flying birds for personal freedom. The window, yet in slightly dark colours, is wide open. The diving girl represents, in my opinion, purity and sound chastity.

With its cyclic composition, in which none of the elements attracts the viewer's full attention, the painting invites to ongoing and variable elucidations and interpretations. Theoretically the variety of subjects can be narrowed down to a theme. However, the comparison of the paintings will not be easy nor has it been a goal.

It's not a requirement to understand the 'Dream painting' as a dream itself nor is it an explanation for a certain series of thoughts and visions which occur during dreaming. Petra hopes to create an atmosphere in her work in which the spectator will lose himself in his own dream.

Robert Verhaaf, Anton Gregoire, February 2012