The main focus of my art practice is the study of dreams and the reasoning of unconscious content. My creative process begins with the daily recording of a 'dream beat' into a dream sketch diary. From these drawings further active imagination sketches are made. Active Imagination is an Analytical Psychology term, first used by Carl G Jung. It describes the process of projecting unconscious content. During this creative stage I am activating my imagination using the recollection of recorded dream memory. Imaginative imagery is then 'projected' onto the canvas through the action of painting. Rather than working from an observable reality, I am drawing from the observations of my 'mind's eye'.

Jung observed that during the process of projecting unconscious content the ego personified the imagery. He called this symbolic person an Archetype. An Archetype is an original pattern derived from the unconscious. Through the study of dreams and mythological texts, Jung was able to demonstrate a repeating pattern of symbolic types. For the first time psychic content revealed order where it had otherwise been regarded as unexplainable and irrational. Archetypes can be observed throughout my art practice. An example are my anthropomorphic trees - gesturing with body language - even though rooted to the ground. Within my work titled 'Mother and Child' is a particular example of the Mother archetype. Here, by depicting a large tree leaning over toward a younger tree they become personified. The image creates empathy for that universal and primal nurturing felt between a mother and her child.

After the dream and active imagination sketches comes a third purification stage in my creative process. Like an Alchemist, these sketches are digitally reinterpreted using 3D computer graphics. The scene, together with its environment and characters are modelled, textured, posed and positioned as a virtual set design. Lighting is established, a camera positioned and the composition arrange according to the sketch. The digital medium is a very rational and procedural based production tool. The computer not only aids in rendering a finished image, it is also an important step in the reasoning of unconscious content. The structured nature of the digital is ideally suited to refinement and analysis becomes inherently part of the creative process.

Once the psychic content has been through the 'wash cycle' of a logical digital production process, the final stage is the 'lapis philosophorum'. Here the digital image is 'output' as a painting - rejuvenating and instilling life back into the imagery. Over the past two years I've developed for my art practice a unique method of computer aided oil painting. Using a system of tonal separations, render passes and oil paint hue calibrations, I reconstruct the image as a painting. This completes the cycle. Imagery that began spontaneously and recorded by my own hand, was analysed and clarified using digital production processes, then finally returned refined and in the gestural medium it began.

My art practice begins at the dream. Utilising the psychological tool of active imagination, and the scientific tool of 3D computer graphics this unconscious content is then refined, reasoned and analysed. Inherent to my creative process are methods aimed at understanding the imagination through the symbolic language of archetypes. As a resolving final step, the rationalised imagery is re-constructed out from the digital and returned as a painting.

Philippe Le Miere - January 2010