"Chagallesque Toothless Bride"

(oil painting on cardboard, 18X24, 1999)

"You must train your intuition - you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide."
Ingrid Bergman

"The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future, but to make it."
Joel Barker

"Every theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy that orders experience into the framework it provides."
Ruth Hubbard

This painting was created in 1999 after I dreamt of a wedding, where I was the bride. In my dream I started loosing teeth in a middle of the reception. My dream was so disturbing that I decided to research it. I already knew that in the Ukrainian tradition it signified the approaching death of somebody very close to the dreamer, but I just brushed that theory off. At that time I was young, in love and having somebody close to me die just was not an option I could possibly accept. So I went to the local library and after spending a few days with Dr. Freud I twisted his theory of suchlike dreams being the fear of impotence into a theory of my own. I figured that since it was physically impossible for me to become impotent I must be afraid of loosing other powers. Combined with the appearance of a wedding in my dream I came to a conclusion that I must be afraid of getting married and loosing my identity. I must also mention that I had my dream at the time when my boyfriend and I started discussing getting married. In the end, we never did get married and it was a few years before I realized that my dream was prophetic after all. The young man I was making plans to wed died in a car accident. Somebody was trying to warn me. I just didn’t want to believe it.