Daniel Stone

I was born in London, England.

From childhood, I have always had very vivid dreams. I would travel to different worlds in those dreams and meet beings, some of them human, some of them animal, and some of them like mythical creatures, neither human nor animal.

I started to paint in order to get closer to these places I went to in dreams and to communicate with the beings that I met.

My life at night was far more interesting than my life in the day, and painting enabled me to spend more time in these fascinating and fantastic worlds.

As I got older, I discovered different mediums and the language evolved.

Apart from dreams at night, I also found myself seeing visions in meditation, or simply when I was out walking. I was developing different perceptions in the day as well as at night.

I didn't have any early art education. I simply explored intuitively and, with practice, developed the techniques.

I didn't go to art school until I was living in Mexico, when I took part in the undergraduate degree programme at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende.

I had always shied away from formal art education because I had met so many artists who had been to art school and were totally blocked through over-thinking.

I was afraid that I would lose the intuitive freedom.

In the end, art school didn't really change the way I paint. It just gave me a bit more confidence, especially with drawing.

The reason for my painting didn't change either. I still wanted to paint the places I experience in the dream of the night and the dream of the day.

I start with a dream or a vision.

The dream can be at night when I am asleep, but it can also be in a sort of waking dream state. The vision can come from meditation or from when I am out walking in the mountains.

Sometimes the visions or dreams are very clear and I have a sense of a coherent drawing, but sometimes I just get a vague sense which can be no more than a feeling.

If I know the drawing to start with, then I practise the different aspects of it. For example, if there are animals or human figures, I practise to feel the form.

Then I bring all the different aspects together.

There will be several drawings as new information arises the more I draw. I keep drawing different versions until I sense an arrival.

If I don't have a clear drawing, then I start kind of half blind and just see what arises.

It is a bit like automatic drawing, but I hold the feeling or the sense of the dream and draw from there.

Gradually, through many sessions, the dream is revealed and I can see it in the drawing.

I take the drawing to the canvas. Sometimes the drawing is complex and detailed. I will make the drawing in pencil or charcoal, and then the painting begins.

I start with the drawing as a guide, but usually the drawing does not stay in its original form. It evolves.

As I am painting, as with drawing, I am in communication with the dream or vision and new information comes constantly.

This is true also when I am not painting.

When I am walking, driving and particularly at night, I will feel the dream evolve and I get clear information about how to proceed, what to change and what colours to use.

I enter the dream, enter the vision and live with it, walk with it, breathe with it.

The painting will change forms, sometimes several times, as if one painting is just a window into the next painting which is closer to the truth of the dream.

This process of change and movement evolves through many versions until, as in the drawing, there is a sense of arrival.

I cannot explain why a painting arrives at this place where you know there is no more to do.

It is just a sense.

This is how it is.

Many times paintings are a mystery to me when they are completed.

I look at them in a kind of wonder.

I enjoy the mystery.

I listen to them.

They teach me.

My experience is that, as Kandinsky wrote, the language of the inner worlds is universal.

Some people see these paintings and recognise them, as if they too have experienced this place, this dream.

They feel a sense of resonance, familiarity and knowing.