Erin Hodson Kilroy

Upon awakening,

Dreams are of water, slipping from our grasp;

Dreams are of smoke, untouchable, fading.

Figures have danced in a dark cosmos,

Telling stories that fragment upon opening eyes.

Exposed to the sun,

Dreams are caught, captured, in threads of blue,

Dreams are burned away, then washed anew.

Light has revealed the fables of night,

Tales and tails of horses, portals, and whales.

Falling into darkness,

Dreams are fleeting, flitting, flashing forms,

Dreams are life, homely, unheimlich, mundane,

We return to the depths with strands of thoughts,

To swim through a parable of the mind once again.

Erin Hodson Kilroy’s practice brings the element of dreams into our world through the use of cyanotypes, a camera-less photography that dates back to 1842. Historically used to replicate images at a low cost, cyanotypes coined the term ‘blueprint’, with the cyanotype solution turning rich, deep blue when exposed to sunlight. Hodson Kilroy has entwined this process with her practice of automatic painting, or automatism, curation of surreal settings, and her depiction of dreams.

Spending her summers in the light of Canterbury Cathedral, Hodson Kilroy has known and loved the historic city since she was a child. Depictions of its charms appear in her dreams, and thus, in her work. Miniature works of the Great Stour and Canterbury Cathedral are kept close in a silver locket, while her newfound connections to the Kent coast are celebrated in an expansive canvas of the North Sea’s endless horizon.

While she looks inward to depict her dreams in streaks of blue, those dreams look outward to the rich life that surrounds her. And, of course, as with all dreams, some bizarrism comes through; whales swim through the air and horses leap into the sky, all while burning orange eyes peek through a veil.