In the 1970s-80s, Rita Wolff painted a series of watercolors of dreams. Thirty or so were published in Rita Wolff: Watercolours, 1974-1985, 1986; St Martin's Press, NY., 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 Rita 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!

As art, her images are always skillful and atmospheric, but... this is all you get.

RELATED TOPICS: watercolors - oil/acrylic - collaborations - dream artists Carl Linkhart - SAO - Xanthe - dreamwork - - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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	ANNE'S DREAM: by Anne, painted by Rita Wolff; 1981, a nightmare. A great storm causes flooding. I'm knee deep in the surge. Women flee and flounder, wearing different colors, forming a panicky rainbow. So much for God's promise...
	DEMETRI'S DREAM: by Demetri Porphyrios, painted by Rita Wolff; 1982, a nightmare. A great quake and fire devastate Athens; I'm up on the Acropolis, as the stone columns of the Parthenon fall...
	KEN'S DREAM: by Ken, as painted by Rita Wolff; 1979, a flying dream. Night. A big city. High in a tower, a man in a wetsuit and flippers is swimming in air--practicing before slipping out the open window...
	LEO'S DREAM: by Leon Krier, as painted by Rita Wolff; 1979, a mysterious dream. A marsh. One figure's wrapped in mummy bandages; another swims--or drowns. A ruin's being rebuilt. Out in the bay, a faint water-road leads to the open sea...
	THREATENED CITY: by Rita Wolff; 1978, a disturbing dream. Night. A hill town. Temples with huge stone statues. But the original figure looms monstrous over the hills. Which is the threat? The giant, or the cult appeasing it?
	TORTURE--A DREAM: by Rita Wolff; 1985, a nightmare painting. In a prison cell, two robed figures with horned hoods like the heads of black owls question a limp figure who looks far beyond answers... CAUTION: IMPLIED TORTURE
	WITNESSES FOR THE PROSECUTION: by Rita Wolff; 1984, a mysterious dream. Night. The Nile; the Pyramids on one bank; minarets and domes on the other. But if the dream's comparing antiquity to modernity... which does it condemn?

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