Music Mosaic - "A Child's Nightmare"

Artist Statement

         This project, entitled A Child’s Nightmare, is based off of the 5^th Movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.  The idea behind the project was to take things that are normal and/or beautiful and turn them into something horrifying.  This particular piece of music is a beautiful classical piece, but, to me, it also has a very dark horror-like aspect to it.  Children often find fear in things without reason, which is represented by the style of the drawings over the pictures.  The simple drawings are similar to how a child would draw, and drawing is a very expressive form of communication for a child.  Whether they are feeling happy, sad, scared, or excited, children can show it on a piece of paper by using a crayon, marker, or paintbrush.

         The colors used in the pictures also play a role.  The photographs themselves are colorful and cheery.  The black, reds, and yellows used in the drawings over the pictures bring a dark and fearful aspect to each photo.  Personally, when I was a very young child, I would always associate villains with the colors black, purple, and red because they were often portrayed dressed in these colors.  Take Disney’s Sleeping Beauty for example.  Maleficent is robed in black and purple, which gives her a chilling presence whenever she enters a room.  The colors used to represent her essentially represent evil and are used to instill fear.  This childlike view of dark colors representing villainy is shown through the colors used in the pictures.

         In the text written by Annie Dillard, she also approaches darkness as something frightening but also fascinatingly beautiful.  She states, “And out of that violet, a sudden enormous black body arced over the water…I saw only one ebony fling, a headlong dive to darkness; then the waters closed, and the lights went out…Darkness appalls and light dazzles” (Dillard, 100-102).  In her description of the water, Dillard was completely captivated by the beauty of it.  Later, however, she states that darkness is appalling.  It is interesting that we, as human beings, are captivated by something dark and frightening to the point where it is impossible to look away.  Of course, once it’s over and we can finally pry our eyes away, a lingering and growing sense of fear encompasses us.  Children are especially good examples of this.  They sit enraptured during a scary part of a film or keep glancing at a frightening image.  The nightmares usually come after the initial exposure, leaving permanent burn marks on the backs of the eyelids that haunt and torment, just the like the music in this piece.