My latest sculpture, ‘Vortex Node’ is inspired by a terrifying nightmare (or was it a vision?) that I experienced over 35 years ago. The three scariest nightmares of my life where all experienced in complete darkness (no visuals whatsoever) and the fact that I can vividly remember them to this day, even though the two earliest ones occurred around fifty years ago, is testament to the emotional impact they had on me at the time. However, the intensity of the third one was genuinely life altering, that is to say, it left me with an altered view of reality.
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| 'Vortex Node', 2026 by artist Wayne Chisnall |
As a bit of explanation for part of the story I’m about to relate I’ll explain that at the time I was living in a converted garage at the bottom of my mother and step-father’s garden. My sister jokes that this is now a family tradition as her eldest son (I’m the eldest of my siblings) also moved into a converted garage in their garden before he eventually went away to university.
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| 'Nest', charcoal & oil painting by artist Wayne Chisnall |
Because the dream that I’m about to tell you about so profoundly affected me at the time, I wrote about it straight after the experience. I know that I still have those notes somewhere but at this point I’ve not been able to find them so here goes the retelling from memory.
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| 'Blackbird's Prayer' sculpture by artist Wayne Chisnall |
As I mentioned, the dream takes place in complete darkness so I’m somehow observing but without the faculty of sight. It’s hard to explain but let’s go with it. It is a dream after all, so we’re using dream logic. In the dream I’m observing an impossibly large vortex that is made up of everything past, present, and future (thoughts, actions, matter, energy, everything). This thing is infinitely bigger than any conceivable god. But this is something that I’m not supposed to be observing and my presence here throws the entire universe out of kilter. Even with all the years now between me and the dream I can still remember the sense of total damnation I felt at the time. It was traumatic, unlike anything I’d felt before or since. It felt as though I’d broken reality and that my very existence was a terrible mistake or a crime against all existence.
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| 3 'Hollow Dog' paintings by artist Wayne Chisnall |
The truly terrifying thing about the nightmare was than when I awoke from it, it was still going on. I could still ‘see’ this vortex reality but with our version of reality playing over the top of it. In this state I realised that our reality was the false one; the thin veneer reality that we, with our limited perceptions, evolved to operate in.
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| 'Blackbird's Prayer' ink drawing by artist Wayne Chisnall |
I don’t know if it’s possible to experience psychotic episodes whilst dreaming but because I couldn’t shake either version of reality (our everyday one and the one that I was now convinced was the true reality) upon waking, I remember that I got dressed, left my garage and went into the house. I tried to act normal even though I was still experiencing the sense of total damnation. Looking around I could see the everyday, physical world the same as I can see it today but it just didn’t feel real. After about half an hour of being awake, my brain obviously couldn’t hold onto both perceptions and defaulted back to the one we all accept. But I do remember that the experience left me feeling shaken for months afterwards.
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| Painting (to be reworked) by artist Wayne Chisnall |
I imagine this experience is one of the reasons for the emergence of vortex-related forms, be they portals, nests, cavities, or orifices etc., in some of my work.
