This series of paintings on handmade paper and canvas employs gouache and watercolour to explore the interwoven themes of grief and the subconscious processing of loss through dreams. Created during a period of personal bereavement, the works reflect an intuitive engagement with memory, emotion, and the fugitive logic of the dream state. The fluid, layered application of pigment mimics the way dreams blur and distort reality, offering an abstracted space in which unarticulated feelings can emerge. Scientifically, dreaming has been shown to play a significant role in emotional regulation and memory consolidation. As noted by Matthew P. Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, “REM sleep, and the dreaming that comes with it, is a therapeutic state during which difficult emotional experiences can be reprocessed in a safer, less painful context” (Why We Sleep, 2017). In this context, Bliss’s paintings function as visual artefacts of this internal process—images that do not narrate grief directly, but instead trace the contours of how it is metabolised in the mind’s quieter hours.

Ongoing work.