Navel of the Dream: Surrealist Lithographs
Bailey Rasmussen C.
“There is at the bottom of each dream a point at which it is unfathomable, a navel, as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown.”
— Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter VII (1900), Standard Edition, Vol. V, p. 525
Navel of the Dream, 2/6 VE, 30x22in, 2025
Navel of the Dream is Bailey’s most recent Stone Lithograph print. The work measures 30x22inches, on archival rag paper.
The illustration depicts a group of figures, human and spirit, enmeshed in their own, and each other’s, horror.
A large boy sitting in the foreground, holds the detached head of an elder in his hands. Both faces look towards us, interrupted. The Eyes of Shame, a symbol that shows up in other work, can be seen floating amongst the smoke that leaks, subtly, out of the boy’s mouth. The woman across from the sitting boy, braces herself against the spirit, the smoke, and the eyes. Her posture suggests eroticism, her hand rests by her barely clothed, thrusted forward, hips and crotch. The spirit encompassing her, holds out a crystal cup with a louching spoon, to be filled by the absinthe juice of a Jurassic flower budding in the background. Farther away from us a woman shudders under a winged spirit, her arms extend around the boy, it seems neither of them are aware of the embrace.
The title refers to the concept of the Navel of the Dream found in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. The Navel of the dream is the moment of a dream where our memory and language fail us, the moment where it becomes too illogical for us to grasp.
The lithographic etching and printing process, in the ECUAD studio, 2025
Granville st. on a Saturday Night, stone lithograph, 12.5x16in, 2021
My style evolved from drawing comics in middle and high school. Even back then my work tended towards the erotic and strange. I would copy the works of Robert and Aline Crumb, Trina Robbins, Julie Doucet, Frank Frazetta to practice the skill of capturing as much information as one can in as little marks as possible and the utility of composition, movement, expression.
As I got older, my purview expanded. I studied illustrators like James Ensor, Maurice Spira, Raymond Pettibon, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Hans Bellmer, Carol Rama, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and other character driven or intuitive drawers.
Gossip, plate lithograph, 2024
printing stone lithograph in the (sun) ECUAD studio, 2023
During my time at Emily Carr University my research focus was primarily on Surrealist history, theory and art. I wrote essays on the history of Surrealist periodicals, Freud’s dreamwork, on Surrealist activism, and how Surrealism exists today. I participated in Surrealist publications (Vile Bird, Lancaster Surrealist Group and Oystercatcher, Inner Island Surrealist Group ), I helped translate French surrealist texts (Benjamin Peret in Front Unique,1959), and attended Surrealist lectures hosted by Abigail Susik, Penelope Rosemont, and Gabriel Weisz Carrington.
This is all to say that my work is undoubtedly influenced by the Surrealists of past and present.
San Juan Del Sur, Stone Lithograph, 30x22in, 2023
My work is surrealist in another way too: I create through intuitive process. I am always curious at what and who might appear.
Untitled, Stone Lithograph, 14x20in, 2024
Up All Night Summoning, 22x30in, 2023
My work has no agenda. Research and preparation for the work is drawing/technical practice, reading theory and absurdist stories, talking about liberation and radicalism with friends and observing the world through poetic lenses. The only way in which the research enters the work is by the internal filter of my unconscious.
Knowing Darkness, Stone Lithograph, 12.5x16in, 2025
Maurice!, Plate Lithograph,15x11in, 2022
Peace and Love for All ~ Free Palestine🍉🍉🍉
Your Mother and I, 24x18in, Stone lithograph, 2024
