Megan Collier

 

"Liminal states of consciousness can be described as transitional or at a threshold; in other words a state in which the mind is in limbo, neither absent nor present. My work explores this concept in relation to sleep, depicting the fleeting moments between dream world and reality, consciousness and unconsciousness. I convey these ideas through creating a similar transitional, liminal quality to my artwork. My portraits have ambiguous identities and it is unclear whether they are awake or asleep. They seem to appear out of the blackness, as if they could just as quickly fade away. In fact, they quite literally disappear and reappear as the natural light changes throughout the day. Some viewers will catch the artworks at a certain time of day and be able to see the sleeping figures, whilst others may entirely miss them unless they look closely. My artwork itself is in a liminal state. 

 

This project has been inspired by own experiences of insomnia, sleepwalking and night terrors. I became intrigued by my confused state of mind in these episodes, fascinated by how I seemed to be both awake and asleep simultaneously and how my mind could be in a dream like world whilst also interacting with reality. During these episodes I was convinced that what my mind was telling me was real; how could my own mind be lying to me in this way? From this starting point I began to explore how my artwork could depict these strange, unknown realms of consciousness in which sleep and reality collide."

 

Contact: m.collier93@hotmail.com