Dreaming Lens: What were you painting in your dream? Were you doing the painting or was someone else? Was it artistic or environmental? Were there colors involved? Did the image evoke a positive or negative response?
Personal Focus: Painting a surface accomplishes several things. First and foremost, it covers whatever is on the receiving surface. It makes a blank canvas come alive with expression. A new image can also cover over an older one. A building or a room can reinvent itself with fresh color, or that which was old and dingy becomes clean with a fresh coat of paint. Seen in this fashion, painting will always connect on a symbolic level with the emergence of something new and expressive as a replacement of something either old or lacking vibrancy.
Paint itself is the stuff with which this form of alteration is executed. Symbolically, it should be considered as the raw material of change of an expressive nature. The control you are able to exert over this liquid, elusive medium, will illuminate for you how effectively you may be utilizing your current creative resources. The more control you are able to access, the more effective your expressiveness is likely to be and how well you are able to manifest your desired intention.
Environmental painting in a dream is likely to connect to your waking life surroundings, though beware of being too literal with your interpretation. Dreaming of painting a room in your home should be explored through the symbolic meaning of that room. The outside of your home connects to your persona, the part of yourself that you show to the world. Therefore, exterior painting, or the need for it, connects to your underlying relationship between your private and public sense of self.
Creative painting can be a little more complex to interpret and the Dreaming Lens will offer you the most information with which to consider the meaning of this symbol. A blank canvas can be synonymous with a moment in life that the artist wishes to capture and express. Covering up an original image with something new might be pointing to a need to reinvent some area of your life in a creative and expressive fashion. If you are the witness and not the painter in your dream, then it is a Character Aspect of yourself that will lead you to new territory. If unknown, your work will be to discover the hidden resources within yourself that can more powerfully express inner desires. Since color is intrinsically bound together with the act of painting, be sure to explore the symbolic meaning of the colors present in your dream (See also: Colors). [1]
To be looking at paintings in dreams indicates that we are questioning or paying attention to different ideas and concepts. Painting as in decorating suggests we are making recognizable changes in how we think and feel.
A picture that we ourselves have painted might have more emotional impact than an old master – an old master can also suggest our attitude to the past. [2]
To dream of painting a house suggets you are a creative person and you will find success in a project. Or, this dream could mean you are covering up something.
To see a painting in your dream, represents your need for self-expression.
The painting is symbolic of your intuition and inner realizations. Also see “Body Paint” [3]
If we are painting large pictures we may need to adopt a more global perspective. Colour in a painting is also important, as is the subject. [4]