Tomorrow's Dream

She isn't sleeping. She's somewhere else entirely.

This is a painting about the interior life, that private place we retreat to when the world asks too much, where something quieter and more luminous waits. Her eyes are closed not in rest but in attention, turned inward toward whatever it is that only she can see.

The gold that surrounds her is ancient and warm, the kind that speaks of icons and altarpieces and the long human tradition of placing a halo around what we consider sacred. The cosmos sits at her centre, scattered with light. Her dress is jewelled, intricate, alive with colour. And yet her face is perfectly still.

I wanted to paint the feeling of a dream you can almost remember. The sense that something important happened there, just beyond the reach of words.

Oil on canvas, 900 x 900mm. Original by Meredith Marsone, New Zealand figurative painter.