Dreamland (2025)

Artwork story Dreamland presents a world suspended between waking reality and imagination. Dark, twisting trees cross a glowing yellow-orange landscape beneath an intense blue sky. At the bottom, a second blue realm appears like water, reflection or an entrance into another world. The viewer is invited to move through the painting slowly, discovering that the forest is inhabited by hidden human faces in profile. Hidden profiles The profiles emerge from the trunks, branches and surrounding negative spaces. Some seem to face one another, suggesting silent conversations; others look outward or remain partially concealed. These faces transform the trees into witnesses, memories or spirits. What first appears to be a landscape gradually becomes a gathering of human presences. Composition and colour The sweeping golden land creates a broad arc through the centre of the painting, held between two powerful fields of blue. The dark tree forms act as a dramatic frame and lead the eye around the large canvas. Their irregular silhouettes bring tension and movement, while the complementary contrast of blue against yellow and orange gives the work its immediate visual force. Materials and artistic development Dreamland is painted on a professionally wrapped canvas, with all four sides painted black. Black is also used within the composition, making Dreamland an important exception to Mona LeBlond's later practice, in which black is extremely unusual and is not used in her birch-tree paintings. The work was painted before Golden-brand acrylics became part of her regular materials. Because of the painting's substantial 48-by-36-inch scale and the cost of covering such a large surface, other acrylic paints were used throughout. Significance Dreamland demonstrates Mona's instinctive ability to build imagery through colour, silhouette and visual discovery. Its concealed profiles reward repeated viewing and reveal a more symbolic side of her practice: nature is not simply observed, but becomes a place where identity, memory and imagination take visible form.