Dream Seed

In the context of dreams, seeds often symbolize potential, new beginnings, fertility, and the nurturing of ideas and dreams. They can represent the seeds of future realities, requiring cultivation and care to blossom. They also represent the dormant yet powerful potential for growth and transformation. They suggest that the seed dreamer is on the cusp of new opportunities or experiences. A seed planted in a dreamer’s mind will germinate new life experiences.

In this ‘Dream Seed’ painting Kerri McGill has created a work which is all about the above, and in the act of dreaming has created a ‘virtual space’ for the viewer to explore and inhabit in which detailed, realistic sensory information has been processed by the artist’s brain and sensibilities to produce virtual actions. These actions identify transitional spaces and movements in time and space to provide avenues for investigation and exploration.

The painting travels through the seeding and germination process at the bottom of the work, and moves through transitional day/night time zones as it moves up the canvas. The planting of ideas is already established by the mid zone or midday section of the painting as the careful colour cultivation leads to a high summer heat of the day release of warmth in the middle upper reaches of the work.

The top section of the work is represented by horizontal bands of colour that signify the late afternoon/early evening afterglow as the sun begins its descent into the night sky. This takes the viewer on the continuation of a circular journey on the right-hand side of the painting as nightfall descends and dark strands fall to reconnect with the earth to begin the seeding, germinating, growth, and transformation process again.    

This abstract realist work, as the name suggests, attempts to capture the essence of reality through abstraction, using techniques like simplified forms, bold colours, and expressive brushstrokes to convey a cohesive set of ideas, thoughts, concepts, and feelings rather than a literal representation. It is a painting that is intelligently conceived and realised.

What is it called when you dream something into reality? A possible way to approach the development of deep dive virtual reality, is to understand it in terms of precognitive phenomena. Precognitive dreams are the most widely reported occurrences of precognition. Usually, a dream or vision can only be identified as precognitive after the putative, or assumed, experience or event has taken place.

The artist has taken a full deep dive into ‘Dream Seed’ and her insights have led her to create what is an unfolding, developing and unique visual language. This challenging and breakthrough work is one in which she has trusted her instincts and intuition. She has identified signposts on the day/night journey and translated them into a successful work which have sown the seeds of future visual realities.

It has taken her forward into that Jungian world of discovering the “magical circle.” This refers to the symbolic representation of the unconscious, where Jung believed that the “magical circle,” is a tool to access, explore and understand unconscious processes through dreams, symbols and images, an active imagination, and creative expression. The ‘Dream Seed’ paintings visual cultivation has enabled the artist to access and integrate the conscious and unconscious aspects of self, driving her to a deeper understanding of her creative vision.

The painting succeeds because it is achieved with insight and the desire to continue to nurture and develop ideas and dreams. There is an organic energy, a confident certainty, an aliveness, that breathes life into the painting.

David Mealing    02.04.25

Retired Museum Director

Te Whare Whakaaro o Pito-one/Petone Settlers Museum

New Zealand Cricket Museum