Dreams usually inspire my thoughts in some ways, and they can be a source of brilliant ideas, I recently had a dream about a dormouse visiting me, and we had a wonderful time together in the dream, she was also sleeping in a bed of flowers. She was still sleeping and I did not want to wake her, but I was also unsure if she was still breathing. I woke up from that dream thinking ‘I must make that into a painting’.
The next early evening while out walking Olls, I found a dormouse in the middle of the path, it looked like they had been hedge cutting and she had fallen into the path, exposed and cold on the concrete, I picked her up along with a bundle of grass and carried her home to get her warm and fed ready for releasing when she was strong enough. I did not have the heart to leave her on the path for a car to squash her or a cat to find her.
After following the advice we could find, and realising our mouse was a vole, also making a den in a small box somewhere warm with grass, and feeding her goat’s milk, she took her last breath in my hands, she was just not strong enough to survive, being so young and tiny. We gave a great little funeral the next day and planted a foxglove on top to complete the circle of nature and life, and also to remind us of this precious little gift.
Both my dream and finding the tiny little mouse-vole inspired the painting I am working on at the moment called ‘Last Sleep’.
Here is a picture of her sleeping, she also bears resemblance to my sketches of the painting before I started. A spark of inspiration.
“I dream of painting then I paint my dream”
Vincent van Gogh.