The visions are the basis for big series of aquarels. In this way the dreams are being presented in film-like sequences which are related to the dream experience itself and do not exist as separate pictures.  It is not by accident that the film producers stress the importance of dreams so much, as for example Ingmar Bergman and our own Nils Gaup do. Ingmar Bergman said that a dream is “a light from our inner landscape”. Einar Magne Flø could easily agree to that.

There are many examples of artists in the old times and nowadays who have brought the tradition further, and searched for inspiration, newness and insight in the dreams.  They can make use of a part of a dream, a landscape or a constellation of figures or special types of dreams as for example nightmares. We know these from (among others) the pictures of Fransisco de Goya (1745-1828).  The flying dream can be found in illustrations of the Hindu wisdom books (Bhagavata Purana), and modern painters such as Chagall. The surrealistic motive of the dream experience has been used particularly by Salvador Dali and de Chirico.  In modern graphics, Jean Arp is a dream-painter.

An artist who consciously takes a chance to focus his attention on the inside, and seeks to write down and recreate the dream experience, is often faced with a challenge of considerable resistance.  The experience might demand a totally new form of expression, whether it concerns a performer of literature, music or pictorial art.  But the reward of “completing the race” can be a glimpse and a vision into a new, unlimited dimention.  And the artist might succeed in bringing something out of “the darkness and sleep” that mankind has never heard or seen before. Perhaps this is what we call inspiration? In all cultures that we know of, there are people who have made use of dreams consciously in the process of creation. They went into the dream, and came out of it with clear ideas of sculptures, masks, textile art, buildings, shield signs, songs, dances and sand paintings, etc. Among these, there were obviously those presenting a better talent and quality than others.  Those were the ones we could call professional artists nowadays.

From my knowledge of the Norwegian history of art, Einar Magne Flø is unique as a dream-painter.  He is unique both because he writes down in details what his dreams are about, but also because of the way he uses them as a basis for his art.  The Indians would call these dreams, - the ones that Flø uses, -“the big dreams”: Visions connected with crucial existential questions.