Every time I sell a piece of artwork it reminds me that the most interesting part is rarely the sale itself. The interesting part is that something which began as a private thought, a half remembered dream or a strange idea inside my own head somehow finds its way into the life of somebody I will probably never meet. That connection still feels remarkable to me no matter how many times it happens.
My Visual Dream Journal series began as an experiment in curiosity. For years I would wake up with fragments of dreams lingering around the edges of my mind. Some would disappear before breakfast while others would stay with me for days. Rather than letting them vanish, I started recording them and using artificial intelligence as a creative collaborator to help explore the strange landscapes hidden inside those dreams.
I do not see AI as a replacement for creativity and I certainly do not see it as a replacement for artists. For me it feels more like working with a photographer. The dream provides the location and the atmosphere. My imagination provides the direction. The machine wanders through the landscape taking photographs and occasionally returns with something unexpected. Sometimes it gets completely lost. Sometimes it reveals details I had not even noticed were there.
What fascinates me is not really the technology itself. What fascinates me is the process of discovery. It is the same curiosity that had me filling school projects with weird animals, monsters and strange ideas when I was a kid. It is the same curiosity that still drives much of my artwork today. The tools have changed but the impulse underneath remains exactly the same.
I have always been drawn to uncommon animals because they remind me that there is more than one way to exist in the world. An aardvark survives by looking where nobody else is looking. A platypus ignores every rule about what an animal is supposed to be and somehow works anyway. Nature is full of examples of creatures succeeding not by fitting in but by leaning further into what makes them different. Creative people could probably learn something from that.
We live in a culture obsessed with scale, speed and constant growth. Bigger audiences, bigger numbers and bigger expectations seem to dominate every conversation. Yet most meaningful things in life begin quietly. A sketchbook begins with a single page. A conservation project begins with a single observation. A dream begins with a single image drifting through the darkness while the rest of the world sleeps.
That is why I remain grateful whenever a piece of work finds its way into somebody else’s life. The financial return might be modest but the connection is not. Somewhere out there another human being saw something in an image that began as a dream and decided it was worth carrying into their own world. That is an extraordinary thing when you stop and think about it.
One day I would love to build my own small screen printing setup here at home. I can already picture it. Ink on my hands, experiments spread across tables and physical prints hanging up to dry. There is something deeply appealing about making work slowly and creating objects that carry traces of the human being who made them. It feels like a natural direction in a world becoming increasingly automated and detached from the people behind the products.
Until then I am grateful for the technology that allows my work to travel. A dream recorded in a small country town can find its way across oceans and into homes I will never visit. An idea born from curiosity can connect with someone on the other side of the planet. A private experience can become a shared one and remind us that people are still searching for stories, meaning and wonder.
That gives me a lot of hope. It reminds me that making things still matters, curiosity still matters and imagination still matters. So I will keep collecting dreams, keep exploring strange ideas and keep following those unusual paths that have fascinated me since childhood. Every now and then one of those ideas will find a home somewhere in the world and that is reason enough to keep creating.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 