The obliteration of a dream

A collection of paintings created out of a feeling of sorrow — a failure to project a vision and offer guidance to today’s generations; a longing for unity and respect for what we have to share, to preserve, and not, as in a game, to destroy without reflection.

Up to this day, the circles of arrogance and selfishness have never been broken. The only difference lies in how destruction takes place.

In my paintings, there are concrete blocks, wooden windows, plaster walls, and faces. Skies of color and grey that represent how, on any given day, your world can change.

A moment of madness, born from a feverish belief that through gained power one can make a human being immortal, is something the ancient gods would have laughed at. They understood that no good could ever come of it. And the faces of lost dreams and hopes behind shattered windows have never felt the need to even challenge the thought.

The horror that people are willing to cast upon others — those who know nothing beyond the daily life of struggle, small joys, and sorrow — becomes slightly more bearable through the contrast of art on a wall.

There lies a paradox in the comically absurd need to survive; through, for instance, Banksy’s “Girl with Balloon” or a poster of the 1980s band The Cure in a window.

In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, I understood the connection between natural destruction and the self-satisfied urge to tempt and annihilate the very source of dreams upon which the survival of the world depends.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on: and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

(Prospero, Act 4, Scene 1) — William Shakespeare

My paintings in this collection have no titles. Instead, I have used quotations from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest for each image.

Together, as viewers, we can feel a deep sorrow for the future we have fought for — as best we could — together.

We are not I or One — we are not alone.

Melanie West, March 2023