Stages of Sleep

Emma Hawthorne is a singer and dancer for large, touring musicals. As with most physical performers, she rolled around quite a lot during her several sleep sessions, so I just kept painting her as she moved. For me, this painting shows Emma's sleep unravelling her day's activities and indicates her self-nurturing nature and positive life choices.

Around the time I was painting this, I started researching the science and structure of sleep, which inspired some thoughts in Emma's painting around the various layers of sleep cycles. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep is when we dream, but it follows three non-REM periods (N1, N2 and N3), each with different EEG patterns and healing properties. We have several sleep cycles throughout the night lasting about 45 minutes each, and in between each cycle we often wake for a few seconds, although we forget it by morning.

I tried to depict the feeling of Emma moving between the cycles and even breaching the surface of sleep during one of those moments of waking.