“Ulter”
Watercolor and gouache on paper
15 x 21 cm
2025
I often catch myself saying miscellaneous things during that hypnagogic state before getting out of bed. Sometimes it’s funny, like “Arctic fox” over and over again. Other times the words are spelled out like a movie title. One of those words was “MOLLOCH” which ended up as a painting. Another one from almost a decade ago was “ULTER”.
Unable to connect all the dots back in 2016, I jotted the rest of the dream down, made a quick sketch and went on with my life. Now that I’m at a phase where I no longer worry so much about making mistakes, the dream is making sense. I’m even tampering with the inkblots I once deemed too sacred and perfect to be manipulated further.
There was a lone ship on a vast red ocean. The waves looked nice and calm on the Lake of Fire that day. Meanwhile I was gigantic, and compared to my left hand, the ship was smaller than my thumb. It felt like I was about to pick it up out of the water, and then I noticed that I had several thumbs branching out from the main one.
According to the late Bill Hicks, thumbs are evolution’s unit of measure. Since “Ulter” means “beyond” and “farther” in Latin, a few extra thumbs would certainly come in “handy” to one with those intentions.
*********
In the original 2016 sketch, enlarging the ship was a creative decision. However, the hand in the old one is more faithful to how it really looked in the dream. One small detail leaves me a little perplexed though, and it’s the tattered sails. I knew it was an old fashioned ship, but I’m no longer sure about that part.
Thanks to Guybrush Threepwood from the Monkey Island games, there was a point in my life where my ambition was to become a pirate. He succeeded in becoming a great one eventually, but went through lots of crazy and supernatural adventures along the way. Along with that aspiration came my fondness for pirate ships, since I also wanted one for myself.
The Ulter dream defibrilated this pirate ship mania and I became quite obsessed with not just putting one in a painting, but understanding how each part of a ship worked. I ended up buying one of those model ships one has to assemble and paint in the name of research. Since there were no pirate ship kits available, I ended up with the “U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard” by Revell, which taught me exactly what I wanted to know. Besides, under the right circumstances, any ship can become a pirate ship.
All great pirate stories begin with the ship. Wanting to own one really became a self fulfilling prophecy made extra special by building it from scratch. Interestingly, both past and present renditions have no ratlines because I don’t remember seeing any in the dream. A ship with sails that cannot be furled must be very hard to control. And amongst the other possible symbolic implications, perhaps it took so long to make the official painting because I had to devise another way to steer. Then perhaps the only ship that can sail in hell was meant for me.
Photos of the model ship I built for the Ulter painting.
