The Wolf Man's dream is one of the most famous dreams in the history of psychoanalysis. It was the harrowing childhood nightmare of Sergei Pankejeff (1886-1979), who was one of Freud’s patients and later became better known as the ‘Wolf Man’. He made a sketch of the dream for Freud, and in later life produced several paintings of it, Pankejeff’s dream is the backdrop to Brian Dawn Chalkley’s new etching titled Wolfmen taking a break from Freud (2023).

Brian Dawn Chalkley reimagines Pankejeff’s dream set against a visceral landscape embellished with androgynous figures, feral animals and frocks. Autobiographical references to the artist’s childhood holidays, the people they encounter and Dawn (their trans alter ego) can be read in tandem with questions about décor and decorum, class and taste, and the status of the artist versus that of the amateur artisan.

Only when we are up close do we start to absorb narratives that allude to the stuff of nightmares. The image is laden with clues but interpretation is slippery and as elusive as the moment between waking and sleeping. While they hint at potential happenings these new pictures reveal no certainty of anything at all.