Coloured pencil on paper
200 x 150 cm

The Artist Sleeps is a drawing that explores the vital role of rest and renewal in the creative process.

Creativity is not constant, it moves in cycles, flowing between productivity and dormancy. When wakefulness blurs into dreaming, the artist retreats to gather strength, sifting through subconscious visions in order to develop new forms.

Sometimes she awakens with clarity, emerging with work fully formed, radiant and ready. At other times, she lingers on the threshold between dreaming and rising, drifting where reality and introspection converge. Sometimes the dream becomes a nightmare, birthing something through pain. In these moments, creation arrives not as a whisper, but as a rupture, a scream from the chest, raw and unfiltered.

This drawing is a meditation on that in-between state. It reflects on the necessity of rest, the madness of the world we wake into, and the transformative potential of dreaming. As the artist stirs, so too does the work, rising from the depths with truths only sleep could summon. To witness is to participate, to step into the quiet tension between rest and emergence, and to consider your own place in the unfolding of an artist’s vision, whether awake or in her dreams.

Emma Michaelis is an artist who has rested long enough.